EARTH’S GREAT RIFT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 24 August 1925, Page 10

EARTH’S GREAT RIFT.

OVER 5000 MILES LONG. THROUGH REP SEA. Mr. Chas. S. Osborn, writing in a New York paper, calls the Great Rift Valiev, the long chasm or canyon connecting Asia and Africa through the Red Sea, which is a part' of it, “The Wedge of the Infinite.” Mr. Osborn has lived in it and explored it, having traversed it from one end in the Holy Land to the other in Southern Rhodesia. He. writes: . The, Great. Rift Valley is the largest tectonic fracture in the surface of the earth. The tremendous indentation reaches from the Dead Sea and the Jordan River in Asia to the Sabi River in South Africa, and has been traced that entire distance, a length of 5000 to 6000 miles, more than a sixth of the earth's circumference. In places it is two miles and more in depth and hundreds of miles in width. Should this planet of ours ever break up, this disintegration would begin at the flaw made by this impressive crack. The first hint of this major fault, was drawn from the report of the American Dead Sea expedition, headedi by Lieutenant Lynch in 1848. The Red Sea trough, of which the Dead Sea and Jordan Valley are a part, took on a new significance in the light of Lynch’s report. For, by his surprising revelation, it was found that the valley or the Dead Sea measured 1293 feet below sea level. The lowest land on the surface of the earth, and that the actual bottom of the sea was 1300 fett lower. Crevasse in the Earth’s Crust. As< early as 1841 Leopold von Bueh described the Red Sea. as. a crevasse in the earth's crust, a conclusion forced by its channelled, parallel shores, suggesting fracture rather than erosion. In 1897 Sir George Adam Smith wrote of the Jordan Valley that there might be something on some other planet that matched it, but not on this one. So began the eomprhension of the trough. Pioneer geologists began to trace it into Asia, and others took up the trail into Africa. The Rift crosses mountains and rivers. Mr Osborn tells us. In certain parts it is as clearly formed as if done with a channelling machine, and at other places is eroded so that it is not easy to follow. Between the Dead Sea and the Araba, Valley there is a ridge 660 feet high marking the uplifts of Edom and Sinai. Blanekenho.rn gives the depth of the fault of the Jordan at. 4500 feet, all in limestone. In the Red Stone Crossland gives the down-throw as 11.000 feet. Hume, director of the geological survey of Egypt, reports at least five subsidiary rifts in the Sinai Peninsula. The Afar desert plains between Abyssinia and the sea contain many lakes below the sea, level, and these plains are the northern entrance to the Great Rift Valley in Africa. Craters of Antiquity. The Great Rift is volcanic, with secondary sedimentary rocks.. For the entire length of the fissure there are volcanoes of all ages, from active, steaming ones to dead craters of great antiquity. The origin, of the Rift is usually placed at the end of the Eocene period, but it was by no means finished then and, in fact, is still subject to minor convulsions. The Ophir gold trails, over which came the gold for Solomon’s temple, gathered by Hiram of Tyre, were obliterated, no doubt, in the inconstant Rift. In large part, the phenomenon still encompasses the wildest portions of Africa. Thousands of square miles of its area are infested with tsetse fly, and the graves of sleeping-sickness victims within, its walls are millions. I have heard the lion roar there as the honey-bird chirped, and the boom of 'lie ostrich contests with the staccato barks of wild dogs. The sounds of the Great Rift are of both life and death. Scores of Volcanoes. Speke’s cones that scrape, the sky are in the Rift, likewise -Mountains of the Moon that Ptolemy knew. Volcanoes are of all ages and conditions. There are scores that are still warm, vet the oldest of its vents are more ancient than the Alps. For the Great Rift was not torn asunder all at one time. The wrecking and rebuilding are still going on to-day. The earth buckles and creeps, it sinks and swells; it swirls giddily on its axis, swaying to and fro nr capsizing as a small craft yawns and submerges at sea a sorry old raft in an ocean of ether. But the old raft contains some amazing exhibits, not the least of which is the Great Rift Valley, in which walked Christ and Cetewavo, Mohammed, and Dingaan Zulu.