A SHATTERED ISLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 2664, 5 April 1905, Page 67

A SHATTERED ISLAND.

By a Bankes

How puny are the mightiest efforts of man a,s compared with the stupendous forces of Fature. The nearest approach to the tremendous exhibitions of Nature's poweis ever achieved by man was unquestionably the destruction of Flood Island (less euphoniously termed also Hell Gate), a most dangerous sunken obstruction near New York. For eight years workmen were boring long tunnels, galleries, and shafts, the total length of the whole having been more than 20 miles, which, when completed, were charged with dynamite or other explosive, the whole being conntcted with an electric battery. 1 All being in readiness, the charge is fired, a little girl, it is stated, pressing the button which is to effect the destruction of an island. In a moment, with a roar o! 10,000 thunders, a seething volume of ocean, 1400 ft in length and 800 ft in breadth, together with the fragments of the island, is upheaved 200 ft towards the clouds; a long lofty wall of waters, which must hive reminded the spell-bound spectators of the watery escarpments through the Red Sea, beneath which the Israelites marched when pursued by Pharaoh's hosts. There it stands, though only for a moment, like an enormous, suddenly molten iceberg projected from the depths of the ocean by sorrfe great convulsion of Nature. And then, with an appalling crash, those millions of tons of water and rock fall back _ into the open chasm cleft in the sea, and in a few minutes the foaming waves have subsided and the shattered island is for ever disula-ced.

.But all this is as nothing to the terrible submarine outbreak which took place near Java little more than a year previously, res\ilting in the immolation of nearly 40,000 souls. With a terrible roar, heard at a distance of 3000 miles, a vast mass of the incandescent interior of the earth is hurled upwards to the estimated height of 17 miles; its fall starting a mighty sea-wave 70ft in height on an errand of desolation and death over many neighbouring islands ; large vessels are stranded several miles inland ; and fertile and prosperous islands are buried beneath a pall of volcanic dust 300 ft deep. And so great was the concussion that a convulsive throb, registered by the instruments in observatories from Bombay to London and on to Toronto, quivered through the atmosphere of the entire globe. And though man's greatest efforts are so puny and so insignificant, yet he dares to put liimself in opposition to the omnipotent Being who created not only this little earth of ours, with its six hundred million billion tons of fiery molten rock, but also all those myriad myriads of other far mightier worlds

scattered throughout the dread abysm of the infinite. And yet Tie, the Son of God, the Creator, selected this minute planet as the favoured orb vhorcon to make a orcat atonement lor the misdeeds committed iv all tlic-o

serrierl universes — ' foe Cluist havi-ig diec once, dicth no more", and v, hooosver -..ili ma; wartieipate m the benefits of that ato.ieraciit pud imy thereby attain to sui Inhclltan.ee n thl ci gory.