The San Francisco calamity by earthquake and fire Part 19

It may be said here that California has proved more subject to severe shocks than any other section of our country. In 1865 sharp tremors shook the whole region about the Bay of San Francisco, many buildings being thrown down. Hardly any of brick or stone escaped injury, though few lives were lost. In 1872 a disturbance was felt farther west, the whole range of the Sierra Nevada mountains being violently shaken and the earth tremblings extending into the State of Nevada. The centre of activity was along the crest of the range, and immense quant.i.ties of rock were thrown down from the mountain pinnacles. A tremendous fissure opened along the eastern base of the mountain range for forty miles, the land to the west of the opening rising and that to the east sinking several feet. One small settlement, that of Lone Pine, in Owen's Valley, on the east base of the mountains, was completely demolished, from twenty to thirty lives being lost. Luckily, the region affected had very few inhabitants, or the calamity might have been great.

The earthquakes of 1812 in the Mississippi Valley began in December, 1811, and continued at intervals until 1813. As a rule they were more distinguished by frequency than violence, though on several occasions they were severe and had marked effects. They extended through the valleys of the Mississippi, Arkansas and Ohio, and their long continuance was remarkable in view of the territory affected being far from any volcanic region.

The surface of the valley of the Mississippi was a good deal altered by these convulsions--several new lakes being formed, while others were drained. Several new islands were also raised in the river, and during one of the shocks the ground a little below New Madrid was for a short time lifted so high as to stop the current of the Mississippi, and cause it to flow backward. The ground on which this town is built, and the bank of the river for fifteen miles above it, subsided permanently about eight feet, and the cemetery of the town fell into the river. In the neighboring forest the trees were thrown into inclined positions in every direction, and many of their trunks and branches were broken. It is affirmed that in some places the ground swelled into great waves, which burst at their summits and poured forth jets of water, along with sand and pieces of coal, which were tossed as high as the tops of trees.

On the subsidence of these waves, there were left several hundreds of hollow depressions from ten to thirty yards in diameter, and about twenty feet in depth, which remained visible for many years afterward.

Some of the shocks were vertical, and others horizontal, the latter being the most mischievous. These earthquakes resulted in the general subsidence of a large tract of country, between seventy and eighty miles in length from north to south, and about thirty miles in breadth from east to west. Lakes now mark many of the localities affected by the earthquake movements. It is only to the fact that this country was then very thinly settled that a great loss of life was avoided.

New Madrid, Missouri, was a central point of this earthquake, the shocks there being repeated with great frequency for several months.

The disturbance of the earth, however, was not confined to the United States, but affected nearly half of the western hemisphere, ending in the upheaval of Sabrina in the Azores, already described. The destruction of Caracas, Venezuela, with many thousands of its inhabitants, and the eruption of La Soufriere volcano of St. Vincent Island were incidents of this convulsion. Dr. J. W. Foster tells us that on the night of the disaster at Caracas the earthquake grew intense at New Madrid, fissures being opened six hundred feet long by twenty broad, from which water and sand were flung to the height of forty feet.

The most destructive of earthquakes in our former history was that which visited Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886, the injury caused by it being largely due to the fact that it pa.s.sed through a populous city.

As it occurred after many of the people had retired, the confusion and terror due to it were greatly augmented, people fleeing in panic fear from the tumbling and cracking houses to seek refuge in the widest streets and open s.p.a.ces.

South Carolina had been affected by the wide-spread earthquakes of 1812.

These in some cases altered the level of the land, as is related in Lyell's "Principles of Geology." But the effect then was much less than in 1886. Several slight tremors occurred in the early summer of that year, but did not excite much attention. More distinct shocks were felt on August 27th and 28th, but the climax was deferred till the evening of August 31st. The atmosphere that afternoon had been unusually sultry and quiet, the breeze from the ocean, which generally accompanies the rising tide, was almost entirely absent, and the setting sun caused a little glow in the sky.

"As the hour of 9.50 was reached," we are told, "there was suddenly heard a rushing, roaring sound, compared by some to a train of cars at no great distance, by others to a clatter produced by two or more omnibuses moving at a rapid rate over a paved street, by others again, to an escape of steam from a boiler. It was followed immediately by a thumping and beating of the earth beneath the houses, which rocked and swayed to and fro. Furniture was violently moved and dashed to the floor; pictures were swung from the walls, and in some cases turned with their backs to the front, and every movable thing was thrown into extraordinary convulsions. The greatest intensity of the shock is considered to have been during the first half, and it was probably then, during the period of its greatest sway, that so many chimneys were broken off at the junction of the roof. The duration of this severe shock is thought to have been from thirty-five to forty seconds. The impression produced on many was that it could be subdivided into three distinct movements, while others were of the opinion that it was one continuous movement, or succession of waves, with the greatest intensity, as already stated, during the first half of its duration."

Twenty-seven persons were killed outright, and more than that number died soon after of their hurts or from exposure; many others were less seriously injured. Among the buildings, the havoc, though much less disastrous than has been recorded in some other earthquakes in either hemisphere, was very great. "There was not a building in the city which had escaped serious injury. The extent of the damage varied greatly, ranging from total demolition down to the loss of chimney tops and the dislodgment of more or less plastering. The number of buildings which were completely demolished and levelled to the ground was not great; but there were several hundreds which lost a large portion of their walls. There were very many also which remained standing, but so badly shattered that public safety required that they should be pulled down altogether. There was not, so far as at present is known, a brick or stone building which was not more or less cracked, and in most of them the cracks were a permanent disfigurement and a source of danger and inconvenience." In some places the railway track was curiously distorted. "It was often displaced laterally, and sometimes alternately depressed and elevated. Occasionally several lateral flexures of double curvature and of great amount were exhibited. Many hundred yards of track had been shoved bodily to the south eastward."

The ground was fissured at some places in the city to a depth of many feet, and numerous "craterlets" were formed, from which sand was ejected in considerable quant.i.ties. These are not uncommon phenomena, and were due, no doubt, to the squirting of water out of saturated sandy layers not far below the surface; these being squeezed between two less pervious beds in the pa.s.sage of the earthquake wave. The ejected material in the Charleston earthquake was ordinary sand, such as might exist in many districts which had been quite undisturbed by any concussions of the earth.

Captain Dutton made a careful study of the observations collected by himself and others concerning this earthquake, and came to the conclusion that the Charleston wave traveled with unusual speed, for its mean velocity was about 17,000 feet a second. The focus of the disturbance was also ascertained. Apparently it was a double one, the two centres being about thirteen miles apart, and the line joining them running nearly the same distance to the west of Charleston. The approximate depth of the princ.i.p.al focus is given as twelve miles, with a possible error of less than two miles; that of the minor one as roughly eight miles.

The Charleston earthquake was felt as a tremor of more or less force through a wide area, embracing 900,000 square miles, and affecting nearly the whole country east of the Mississippi. It is said that the yield of the Pennsylvania natural gas wells decreased, and that a geyser in the Yellowstone valley burst into action after four years of rest.

The movement of the earth-wave was in general north and south, deflected to east and west, and the snake-like fashion in which rails on the railroad were bent indicated both a vertical and a lateral force.

This earthquake has been attributed to various causes, but geological experts think that it was due to a slip in the crust along the Appalachian Mountain chain. There is a line of weakness along the eastern slope of this chain, characterized by fissures and faults, and it was thought that a strain had been gradually brought to bear upon this through the removal of earth from the land by rains and rivers and its deposition in thick strata on the sea-bottom. It is supposed that this variation in weight in time caused a yielding of the strata and a slip seaward of the great coastal plain. Professor Mendenhall, however, thinks it was due to a readjustment of the earth's crust to its gradually sinking nucleus.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Volcano and the Earthquake, Earth's Demons of Destruction.

To most of us, dwellers upon the face of the earth, this terrestrial sphere is quite a comfortable place of residence. The forces of Nature everywhere and at all times surround us, forces capable, if loosened from their bonds, of bringing death and destruction to man and the work of his hands. But usually they are mild and beneficent in their action, not agents of destruction and lords of elemental misrule. The air, without whose presence we could not survive a minute, is usually a pleasant companion, now resting about us in soft calm, now pa.s.sing by in mild breezes. The alternation of summer and winter is to us generally an agreeable relief from the monotony of a uniform climate. The variation from sunlight to cloud, from dry weather to rainfall, is equally viewed as a pleasant escape from the weariness of too great fixity of natural conditions. The change from day to night, from hours of activity to hours of slumber, are other agreeable variations in the events of our daily life. In short, a great pendulum seems to be swinging above us, held in Nature's kindly hand, and adapting its movements to our best good and highest enjoyment.

But has Nature,--if we are justified in personifying the laws and forces of the universe,--has mother Nature really our pleasure and benefit in mind, or does she merely suffer us to enjoy life like so many summer insects, until she is in the mood to sweep us like leaves from her path? It must seem the latter to many of the inhabitants of the earth, especially to the dwellers in certain ill-conditioned regions. For all the beneficent powers above named may at a moment's notice change to destructive ones.

THE WIND IS A DEMON IN CHAINS

The wind, for instance, is a demon in chains. At times it breaks its fetters and rushes on in mad fury, rending and destroying, and sweeping such trifles as cities and those who dwell therein to common ruin.

Sunshine and rain are subject to like wild caprices. The sun may pour down burning rays for weeks and months together, scorching the fertile fields, drying up the life-giving streams, bringing famine and misery to lands of plenty and comfort, almost making the blood to boil in our veins. Its ant.i.thesis, the rainstorm, is at times a still more terrible visitant. From the dense clouds pour frightful floods, rushing down the lofty hills, sweeping over fertile plains, overflowing broad river valleys, and, wherever they go, leaving terror and death in their path.

We may say the same of the alternation of the seasons. Summer, while looked forward to with joyous antic.i.p.ation, may bring us only suffering by its too ardent grasp; and winter, often welcomed with like pleasurable antic.i.p.ations, may prove a period of terror from cold and dest.i.tution.

Such is the make-up of the world in which we live, such the vagaries of the forces which surround us. But those enumerated are not the whole.

Can we say, with a stamp of the foot upon the solid earth, "Here at least I have something I can trust; let the winds blow and the rains descend, let the summer scorch and the winter chill, the good earth still stands firm beneath me, and of it at least I am sure?"

Who says so speaks hastily and heedlessly, for the earth can show itself as unstable as the air, and our solid footing become as insecure as the deck of a ship laboring in a storm at sea. The powers of the atmosphere, great as they are and mighty for destruction as they may become, are at times surpa.s.sed by those which abide within the earth, deep laid in the so-called everlasting rocks, slumbering often through generations, but at any time likely to awaken in wrath, to lift the earth into quaking billows like those of the sea, or pour forth torrents of liquid fire that flow in glowing and burning rivers over leagues of ruined land.

Such is the earth with which we have to deal, such the ruthless powers of nature that spread around us and lurk beneath us, such the terrific forces which only bide their time to break forth and sweep too-confident man from the earth's smiling face.

THE SUBTERRANEAN POWERS

The subterranean powers here spoken of, those we had denominated earth's demons of destruction, are the volcano and the earthquake, the great moulding forces of the earth, tearing down to rebuild, rending to reconst.i.tute, and in this elemental work often bringing ruin to man's boasted fanes and palaces.

No one who has ever seen a volcano or "burning mountain" casting forth steam, huge red-hot stones, smoke, cinders and lava, can possibly forget the grandeur of the spectacle. At night it is doubly terrible, when the darkness shows the red-hot lava rolling in glowing streams down the mountain's side. At times, indeed, the volcano is quiet, and only a little smoke curls from its top. Even this may cease, and the once burning summit may be covered over with trees and gra.s.s, like any other hill. But deep down in the earth the gases and pent-up steam, are ever preparing to force their way upward through the mountain, and to carry with them dissolved rocks, and the stones which block their pa.s.sage.

Sometimes, while all is calm and beautiful on the mountains, suddenly deep-sounding noises are heard, the ground shakes, and a vast torrent tears its way through the bowels of the volcano, and is flung hundreds of feet high in the air, and, falling again to the earth, destroys every living thing for miles around.

It is the same with the earthquake as with the volcano. The surface of the earth is never quite still. Tremors are constantly pa.s.sing onward which can be distinguished by delicate instruments, but only rarely are these of sufficient force to become noticeable, except by instrumental means. At intervals, however, the power beneath the surface raises the ground in long, billow-like motions, before which, when of violent character, no edifice or human habitation can for a moment stand. The earth is frequently rent asunder, great fissures and cavities being formed. The course of rivers is changed and the waters are swallowed up by fissures rent in the surface, while ruin impends in a thousand forms. The cities become death pits and the cultivated fields are buried beneath floods of liquid mud. Fortunately these convulsions, alike of the earthquake and volcano, are comparative rarities and are confined to limited regions of the earth's surface. What do we know of those deep-lying powers, those vast buried forces dwelling in uneasy isolation beneath our feet? With all our science we are but a step beyond the ancients, to whom these were the t.i.tans, great rebel giants whom Jupiter overthrew and bound under the burning mountains, and whose throes of agony shook the earth in quaking convulsions. To us the volcanic crater is the mouth from which comes the fiery breath of demon powers which dwell far down in the earth's crust. The t.i.tans themselves were dwarfs beside these mighty agents of destruction whose domain extends for thousands of miles beneath the earth's surface and which in their convulsions shake whole continents at once. Such was the case in 1812, when the eruption of Mont Soufriere on St. Vincent, as told in a later chapter, formed merely the closing event in a series of earthquakes which had made themselves felt under thousands of miles of land.

ANCIENT AWE OF VOLCANOES

In olden times volcanoes were regarded with superst.i.tious awe, and it would have been considered highly impious to make any investigation of their actions. We are told by Virgil that Mt. Etna marks the spot where the G.o.ds in their anger buried Enceladus, one of the rebellious giants.

To our myth-making ancestors one of the volcanoes of the Mediterranean, set on a small island of the Lipari group, was the workshop of Vulcan, the G.o.d of fire, within whose depths he forged the thunderbolts of the G.o.ds. From below came sounds as of a mighty hammer on a vast anvil.

Through the mountain vent came the black smoke and lurid glow from the fires of Vulcan's forge. This old myth is in many respects more consonant with the facts of nature than myths usually are. In agreement with the theory of its internal forces, the mountain in question was given the name of Volcano. To-day it is scarcely known at all, but its name clings to all the fire-breathing mountains of the earth.

As before said, at the present day we are little in advance of the ancients in actual knowledge of what is going on so far beneath our feet. We speak of forces where they spoke of fettered giants, but can only form theories where they formed myths. Is the earth's centre made up of liquid fire? Does its rock crust resemble the thick ice crust on the Arctic Seas, or is the earth, as later scientists believe, solid to the core? Is it heated so fiercely, miles below our feet, that at every release of pressure the solid rock bursts into molten lava? Is the steam from the contact of underground rivers and deep-lying fires the origin of the terrible rending powers of the volcano's depths? Truly we can answer none of these questions with a.s.surance, and can only guess and conjecture from the few facts open to us what lies concealed far beneath.

RARITY OF ANCIENT ACCOUNTS

In the history of earthquakes nothing is more remarkable than the extreme fewness of those recorded before the beginning of the Christian era, in comparison with those that have been registered since that time.

It is to be borne in mind, however, that before the birth of Christ only a small portion of the globe was inhabited by those likely to make a record of natural events. The vast apparent increase in the number of earthquakes in recent times is owing to a greater knowledge of the earth's surface and to the spread of civilization over lands once inhabited by savages. The same is to be said of volcanic eruptions, which also have apparently increased greatly since the beginning of the Christian era. There may possibly have been a natural increase in these phenomena, but this is hardly probable, the change being more likely due to the increase in the number of observers.

The structure of a volcano is very different from that of other mountains, really consisting of layers of lava and volcanic ashes, alternating with each other and all sloping away from the center. These elevations, in fact, are formed in a different manner from ordinary mountains. The latter have been uplifted by the influence of pressure in the interior of the earth, but the volcano is an immediate result of the explosive force of which we have spoken, the mountain being gradually built up by the lava and other materials which it has flung up from below. In this way mountains of immense height and remarkable regularity have been formed. Mount Orizabo, near the City of Mexico, for instance, is a remarkably regular cone, undoubtedly formed in this way, and the same may be said of Mount Mayon, on the Island of Luzon.

In many cases the irregularity of the volcano is due to subsequent action of its forces, which may blow the mountain itself to pieces.

In the case of Krakatoa, in the East Indies, for instance, the whole mountain was rent into fragments, which were flung as dust miles high into the air. The main point we wish to indicate is that volcanoes are never formed by ordinary elevating forces and that they differ in this way from all other mountains. On the contrary, they have been piled up like rubbish heaps, resembling the small mountains of coal dust near the mouths of anthracite mines.

It is to the burning heat of the earth's crust and the influence of pressure, and more largely to the influx of water to the molten rocks which lie miles below the surface, that these convulsions of nature are due. Water, on reaching these overheated strata, explodes into volumes of steam, and if there is no free vent to the surface, it is apt to rend the very mountain asunder in its efforts to escape. Such is supposed to have been the case in the eruption of Krakatoa, and was probably the case also in the recent case of Mt. Pelee.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF ERUPTIONS

If we should seek to give a general description of volcanic eruptions, it would be in some such words as follows: An eruption is usually preceded by earthquakes which affect the whole surrounding country, and a.s.sociated with which are underground explosions that seem like the sound of distant artillery. The mountain quivers with internal convulsions, due to the efforts of its confined forces to find an opening. The drying up of wells and disappearance of springs are apt to take place, the water sinking downward through cracks newly made in the rocks. Finally the fierce unchained energy rends an opening through the crater and an eruption begins. It comes usually with a terrible burst that shakes the mountain to its foundation; explosions following rapidly and with increasing violence, while steam issues and mounts upward in a lofty column. The steam and escaping gases in their fierce outbreaks hurl up into the air great quant.i.ties of solid rock torn from the sides of the opening. The huge blocks, meeting each other in their rise and fall, are gradually broken and ground into minute fragments, forming dust or so-called ashes, often of extreme fineness, and in such quant.i.ties as frequently to blot out the light of the sun. There is another way in which a great deal of volcanic dust is made; the lava is full of steam, which in its expansion tears the molten rock into atoms, often converting it into the finest dust.

The eruption of Mt. Skaptar, in Iceland, in 1783, sent up such volumes of dust that the atmosphere was loaded with it for months, and it was carried to the northern part of Scotland, 600 miles away, in such quant.i.ties as to destroy the crops. During the eruption of Tomboro, in the East Indies, in 1815, so great was the quant.i.ty of dust thrown up that it caused darkness at midday in Java 300 miles away and covered the ground to a depth of several inches. Floating pumice formed a layer on the ocean surface two and a half feet in thickness, through which vessels had difficulty in forcing their way.

The steam which rises in large volumes into the air may become suddenly condensed with the chill of the upper atmosphere and fall as rain, torrents of which often follow an eruption. The rain, falling through the clouds of volcanic dust, brings it to the earth as liquid mud, which pours in thick streams down the sides of the mountain. The torrents of flowing mud are sometimes on such a great scale that large towns, as in the instance of the great city of Herculaneum, may be completely buried beneath them. Over this city the mud acc.u.mulated to the depth of over 70 feet. In addition to these phenomena, molten lava often flows from the lip of the crater, occasionally in vast quant.i.ties. In the Icelandic eruption of 1783 the lava streams were so great in quant.i.ty as to fill river gorges 600 ft. deep and 200 ft. wide, and to extend over an open plain to a distance of 12 to 15 miles, forming lakes of lava 100 feet deep. The volcanoes of Hawaii often send forth streams of lava which cover an area of over 100 square miles to a great depth.