PRANKS PLAYED BY EARTHQUAKES.

Dunstan Times, Issue 2486, 21 June 1909, Page 8

PRANKS PLAYED BY EARTHQUAKES.

(By Elliott Baketier.)

Of all natural phenomena, probably, the most terror-inspiring, the one most dreaded by humanity, is the earthquake. Man, as a crass, is not cowardly; he will face his danger, and die, fighting, or, if the odds be overwhelming, in endeavoring to reach a place of safety. If he is drowning, there is always the shore, no matter how remote, that he may hope to reach; in a cyclone, there is the cyclone-cellar provided in countries where this particularly devastating phenomenon is frequent; in a flood, there are always higher levels that are not reached. Even the horrors of a volcanic eruption axe confined to the immediate neighborhood. But from an earthquake there is no escape; one place is as safe, or as unsafe, as another; and, worst .of all, there is no method of providing a place of safety, even in countries where seismic disturbances are common. To a certain extent this is true also of lightning, but the attentions of the “fire from Heaven” are generally individual and isolated, while an earthquake is a widespread cataclysm; and this difference is apparent not only in then tragedies, but also in their comedies; their many apparently inconsistent, wholly inexplicable, performances. Both have slam their thousands, but the lightning has struck directly one oi two at a time, while the earthquake has taken its victims, indirectly for the most part, by hundreds and thousands. Consequently, while the lightning has favored man as. the butt of his practical jokes, the earthquake has confined itselt generally to property. And while, in the nature of things, it has not been as prolifis in odd or amusing freaks as its more volatile brother of the skies, it has sever theless performed some curious feats. Perhaps one of the strangest or these occurred in Chile, where earthquakes are not such a rarity as in the United States. In 1678, during a particularly severe series of shocks, a huge wave formed, the city of Callao was inundated, and large ship were carried far inland. , Among these was a new fishing boat ol twenty or thirty tons, which wasstranded, practically uninjured, on the toimdations of a house, more than a league from the shore. ... The house had been completely annihilated, and the astonishment and delight of its terrified owner and his family may Be imagined when, after the subsidence ot the wave, they crept, tremblingly and dejectedly, back to view the wreck ot their home, and found, instead of the wretched hovel from which they had tied, a fine new cabin-boat. , The owners of the boat were ne\ er heard from— probably they perished with the thousands of others in Callao—-and the landowner accepted it as a gilt from the gods. , , , . , For fifty-nine years he and his descendants lived comfortably in their boat. Then came the earthquake of 1746. Callao was again swept by a huge tidal-wave and the boat, raised on its crest, was carried further inland ; then swept back by the wash to the shore and dropped on the beach within a quarter of a mile of the spot from which it had been taken three score years before. The carrying of shipping often several miles inland is a common trick of earthquakes, or, more correctly, sea-quakes; for it is the disturbance of the bed of the sea that causes these frightfully destructive waves. , For instance, when Port Royal, Jamaica, was destroyed in 1692, a large frivate was carried over the city and stranded literally high and dry on the roof of a three-storey house. The general tendency of an earthquake is toward as nearly total destruction as possible, but not infrequently it displays a delicacy of touch in conjunction with a stupendous power that is appalling. The Japanese quake on October 18, 1891, known as the Mino Owaro earthquake, furnishes another example. In a place near the city of Nagoya, on the bay of Japan, a huge levee was lifted bodily and shifted more than sixty feet without serious injury. As a rule an earthquake’ wrecks impartially, but sometimes it will show curious consideration for one building while annihilating its neighbor. During the great earthquake which very nearly destroyed Lisbon, on November 1, 1775, an incident of this kind was noted. This was a particularly destructive quake, the greater part of the city being wrecked and more than forty .thousand lives lost. On a street near the outskirts of the city were two houses ; they were exactly alike. One of these was thrown down, a total wreck ; the other was moved fifteen' feet out into the street without so much as disturbing the furniture or breaking the glassware. This curious partiality has been explained more or less satisfactorily by . the rift, or fault, in the substrata of rock that causes earth tremors not of volcanic prigin. As a matter of fact, the greatest damage is not done by the rift or earthquake iteslf, but by the jarring waves extending in ever-widening circles of which the rift is the cause. The late California earthquake, April 18, 1906, furnishes some remarkable_ examples of the curious effects of the rift. At Skinner’s Ranch, a large dairy near Oleman, the house stood near the road. Opposite it, on the roadside, was a row of large cypress trees. Between them and the house was a little rose garden, and south of this, opposite the dairy, . was a row of eucalyptus trees. The rift passed directly before the house, between it and the road, and “had Mr Skinner,” says the chronicler, “chanced to look at the right instant he would have seen the whole row of cypress trees file past his window to take up their station in front of the dairy, taking the rose-garden with them.”

A few raspberry bushes came from farther north to take the place of the roses. The eucalyptus trees in front of the dairy moved on t oa position opposite the barn, and one, detached from the others, was left near the head' of the line instead of at its foot. The house and buildings, only a few feet away, were not affected at all, except the barn. This joined the procession, but was not injured. As evidence of the sharply defined line of the rift, under each of the east windows of the barn stood a pile of manure. Each pile, after the quake, was absolutely intact sixteen feet seven inches north of its* window.

In a great cataclysm, like the San Francisco earthquake, the minor freaks of the phenomenon are apt to be lost sight of. Nevertheless, soihe few have been recorded.

At King’s Mountain House, for instance, a number of pans of milk were skimmed, the cream from all the pans spilling out to the south-west side, leaving the skimmed milk in the pans. Again, at a barn three miles north-west of Woodside a number of heavy carriages were moved sidewise six inches, but did not roll forward or back on their wheels an inch. In San Francisco itself the work of the earthquake was, to a large degree, overlaid by the ravages of fire, and undoubtedly many evidences' of the tremor’s freakish activities were obliterated before they could be observed. But some were noted. , , A bouse on Seventeenth street was almost totally wrecked’. The brick, front had fallen out, the roof plunged through the flooring, and the side wall twisted and cracked; but on a window-ledge a large potted geranium, in full bloom, stood un- ■ disturbed. . . Another house near-by, a frame structure, was only slightly damaged, but a

heavy beam of the third floor had been torn loose, forced like a battering ram through the wall, protruding some five feet into the street directly over the front door, and from it, depending from a hook and entirely iUininjurea, hung a wildly protesting green parrot in a large cage. The galloping train of the great Charleston (South Carolina) earthquake, of August 31, 1886, is well known. The down Columbia train, engineer Burns, fireman Arnold, was proceeding at its regular speed, when it suddenly seemed to rise in •'■he air and then plunge downward, only to rise and plunge again. The effect Was exactly the same as a boat pitching in a heavy sea, even to the rolling movement. ; The train actually galloped along the track, a distance of several hundred yards, the front and rear trucks rising and falling alternately, until it was finally derailed, and brought to a standstill. Both Burns and Arnold were badly injured by the overturning of the engine, but the' passengers escaped with a shaking up and a bad fright. On the outskirts of the city of Charleston a large, square, Colonial house, stall'ding cn the corner of an avenue and a narrow street, was turned witli comparatively little injury exactly one-quarter around, and left squarely on its foundations, but facing on the street instead of the avenue. As°a rule, an earthquake stops clocks; but in the home of a Mr Stanley Jones, of Charleston, a huge “grandfather’s clock,” that had not run. for months, was found turned • completely around with its face to the wall and ticking merrily. Tills clock was so top-heavy that for safety it had been braced to the wall by small brass L’s; but though china and ornaments were thrown from shelves, and furniture overturned, the clock, torn from its support and turned around, still remained upright. Perhaps one of the most interesting earthquakes, or series of earthquakes, visited '.he Mississippi Valley from December 16, 1811, to the following February. Over a region of country extending three hundred miles, from the mouth of the Ohio to the St. Francis, the ground rose and fell, lakes were formed and drained, and innumerable wide fissures were opened. The central point of these earthquakes was about thirty miles below New .Madrid, and it attempted a feat never attempted by man. It dammed for a while ‘‘The Father of Waters” itself. The banks and bed of the Mississippi bulged for twenty-five feet above the normal level, and for several hours the mightiest of rivers was turned I have said that there is no method of providing against an earthquake*; but in this instance, owing to the long period through which shocks of more or less violence were almost continuous, the inhabitants learned the general direction in which fissures were opened. 80, by telling trees at right angles to them, and throwing themselves upon the trunks, many lives were saved. It is an interesting coincidence that at this period the first steamboat to ply western waters was making its initial voyage down the Mississippi. And a terrible voyage it was. All channels and marks were obliterated and changed, and the liver was continually lashed by waves.

The ship was the New Orleans, commanded by a Mr Roosevelt, and it eventually arrived safely. The sounds produced by earthquakes are sometimes marvellously like ordinary noise. For instance, during a slight tremor in Lincolnshire, England, on February 6, 1817, the noise so closely resembled a team of horses running away that caters hastily drew into the ditch to permit the supposed runaway to pass. A curious fact in this connection is recorded by Professor Edwin J. Houston in relation to the great eruption of Krakatoa, off the coast of Java, August 26. 1885. The earthquake-shocks were almost continuous, and were accompanied by a terrific. constantly increasing roar, so tremendous that ‘it was heard over three thousand miles away. “Yet it is a fact, says the professor, “that the people in the immediate neighborhood did not bear the noises at all.” While an earthquake is prone to take life, it may be credited, at least in one instance, with saving it. One Pedro Montalvo, a Peruvian, was convicted of treason and sentenced to be shot. At dawn he was led out, placed against a wall beside a newly dug grave, and the soldiers took their places. The order to fire was about to be given, when, suddenly, the earth rocked. The shock was not very severe, but when the soldiers recovered their equilibrium they were amazed to find that both prisoner and grave had, disappeared. The wall had been moved inward four feet, toppling the bound prisoner into the grave and passing over him, leaving him unhurt in the hole—two feet outside the wall. Friends, waiting sorrowfully for the fatal shots, dragged him out, and he escaped.