THE WEES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2719, 25 April 1906, Page 52

THE WEES.

- .-HtMLiir al!n4 natur*. ziiud upieotU dlxjt."— Jnruu, "ttwi o&iurt tad goo*f ceuse must «r«r join.* — Porit

The day was breaking as we crossed the ferry ; the fog was rising She Kuln Francisco ; the bay was peroffh« feet — .lot a ripple, scarce a Pacific stain upon its blue expanse ; Capitol. over the citied hills of San

everything was waiting breathless for the sun. A spot of cloudy gold lit first upon the head of Tamalpais, and- then widened downward on its shapely snoulder ; the air eeemed to awaken and began to sparkle" and suddenly ' The tall bills Titan disco\ered' and the City of San Francisco, and the bay of gold and corn were lit from end to end with summer daylight." This is how Robert Louis Stevenson described his advent to San Francisco on August 30, 1879. He had reached Sacramento on the previous afternoon, and before dawn ou the following day the train was drawn up at tlw Oaklands side of the Sar Francisco Ferry, from which vantage he first saw the city. And as San Francisco appeared to .Stevenson 27 years ago, so viewed at a distance it must have seemed at daybieak on the fateful morning of Wednesday, April 18, 1906. Then breaking in upon that peculiar stillness in the air v»hich almost always precedes an earthquake, came the faint Bound like unto the rising of the wind, accompanied by an earth tremor which, increasing as the rumblings loudened, culminated in a violent shock laying half the imildings in the city in ruins. Shock succeeded shock, every instant adding to the terror of the panic-stricken inhabitants, now crowding the streets and looking vainly for a place of safety. Fortunately the greatest intensity of the first shock was felt in the business" quarter of the town, which at that early hour was comparatively deserted. This accounts with the light death roll as compared with the Lisbon disaster of 1875. The Ist of November of that year was All Saints' Day, a festival of great solemnity ; and at 9 o'clock in the morning all the Lisbon churches were crowded with worshippers, when a sudden and" most violent shock made every church reel to its " foundations. Within the interval of a few minutes two other shocks no less violent ensued, and every church in Lisbon, tall column and towering spire, Vas hurled to the ground. Thousands and thousands of people were crushed to death, yxd thousands more seriously maimed, un-

able to crawl away, an<3 left to expire in lingering agony. The more stately and magnificent had been the fabric, the wider And more grievous was the havoc made by its ruin. It was computed that about onefourth of all the houses in the city toppled down. The encumbered streets could scarce afford an outlet to the fugitives. "Friends," says an eye-witness of the disaster, "running from their friends, fathers from their children, husbands from their wives, because everyone fled from their habitations full of terror, confusion, and distraction." The earth seemed to hsave and quiver like an animated being, and the sun was darkened and the clouds of lurid dust that arose.

Allowing for the differences of time and place, this description of the First the Lisbon earthquake gives Earthquake, some idea of the awfnl then the Fire, nature of the disaster which just a weak ago overtook the capital of the Golden West. The fiist shock was followed by others of like severity in quick succession, and buildings were shattered and brought to the ground on every side. T«o kinds of edifices alone successfully withstood the terrible convulsion — the steel-framed sky scrapers, as in the case of the Call newspaper building, the tallest in the city, and the Dolores Mission Church, built of unbaked adobe bricks ; tte latter, which dates, back to 1776, survived both the earthquake and the succeeding fire. For as in Lisbon so in San Francisco, " after the earthquake a fire." It is only in the crea of great conflagrations that "man recognises the terrific beauty and loveliness of fire. As one writer has said : "Dealing with fire in ordinary life it is, I suppose, too much of a slave to us to command our admiration. It is only when it starts up and ?.fisumes ihe mastership that we recognise its majesI tic, if destructive power. It is as if a company of galley slaves broke their bonds and carried ruin and destruction all along before them, then fell down lifeless under the ruin they had made. But it is a mighty element — all the more to be dreaded because it is latent yet operative every - - where — nay, it is the great" central energy which everywhere works through space." Exactly how the fire started will probably never be known : it may have been through the explosion of the gasworks, or, as ;it Lisbon, where about two hours after the first shock fires broke out in three different parts of the city, occasioned from the goods and the kitchen fires being all jumbled together. The similarity between the two disasters is seen in the following description of the Lisbon conflagration : "At this time also the wind blew into a fresh gale, which made the fires spread in extent and rage with fury during three days, until there remained but little for tliem to devour. Many of the maimed and wounded are believed to have per.'shed unseen and unheeded in the flames; some few were almost miraculously rescued after being for whole days buried where they tell, without light or food or hope. The total number of deaths was computed at the time as not less than 30,000." As already observed, the main point of difference between the two disasters happily consists in the smaller death roll in the case of San Francisco — a difference attributable partly to the early hour of the morning when the first shock was felt, and partly to the more modern construction of the majority of the buildings, but most of all because of the absence of the terrible tidal wave which at Lisbon followed the earthquake shock, an accumulation of horror which the Pacific capital was happily spared.

There is a great deal of similarity between the history of CaliSome Points fornia and that of Otago, of Interest, and between the record of

Dunedin and San Francisco, which makes real reason for the show of sympathy proffered by New Zealanders to the sufferers in the Western American States. In 1848 San Francisco was a village of some 700 inhabitants, when the discovery of gold changed the entire aspect of the country. In the succeeding eighteen months a torrent of 50 ; 000 argonauts had poured over across the Isthmus of Panama and over the plains, leaving their trail of dead through the awful grey solitude of the waterless desert! In the summer of '49 there were 500 vessels lying in San Francisco harbour, where a few years earlier a single visitor had been comparatively rare. And at the same hour on the Eastern coast of America every port was a-clamour with men frantically demanding a passage, and the refrain of the pilgr-m's song was everywhere heard,

O California, that's the land for me. This same scene was repeated on a smaller scale at the Gabriel's Gully rush some twelve years later, when many of the miners whose experience had been gained on the Californian fields joined in the stream of adventurers, 20,000 strong, which, landing in Dunedin, streamed over the Tokomairiro plains and over the winding track to Gabriel's Gully. Thus both Dunedin and San Francisco can date the beginning of their prosperity to the impetus afforded by the discovery of gold. The same city, too, is lich in literary associations, which must endear it to every book-loving New Zealander. It was in 1854, while the golden tide was yet flowing strongly. that Bret Harte journeyed from the Eastern States to California by way of the Isthmus of Panama — to which fact we owe much of our knowledge of early Californian hie and character. At that time San Fran cisoo contained a little coterie of men of undoubted literary ability. Among them were Mark Twain. Charles Warren Stoddard, Prentice Mulford. and Charles Henry Webb. It was largely to provide a medium for their theories and their work that "The California" was founded, a paper which, though short-lived, will be fondly remem'oereu wherever the English language is known, as introducing to the public that inimitable sketch by a then unknown writer entitled. "The Jumping Frog of Calaveras."' When the Californian coliapsed its Dlace was taken by The Golden Era, to which both Mark

Twain and Bret Harte contributed. This was the stepping stone to Bret Harte taking the editorship in 1868 of The Overland Monthly, then newly fourded, and in the second number or which appeared "The Luck of Roaring Camp," the first end most famous of those " Tales of tht Argonauts," by which the American humourist achieved everlasting fame, oan Francisco, too, was the scene of the marriage of Robert Louis Stevenson, to Fanny Van de Grift, on May 19, 1880; and it is worthy of note that the man who has immortalised California in his sketches "Across the Plains," "The Ainaiour Emigrant,' and " The Old Pay. •• Capital.' lived in a single room in a poor house in Bush street, San Francisco, took his meah in cheap restaurants, ?nd lived on seventy cents a day. It is true that he made inquiries about work on the San Francisco Bulletin, but the payment offered by that newspaper for literary articles, which were all Stevenson was willing to undertake, was too small to be of any use to a writer so painstaking and so deliberate. But perhaps the most significant literary circumstance in connection with San Francisco is the fact that Bret Harte has left on record a semi-humorous sketch entitled "The Ruins of San Francisco, which starts with the statement that " towards the close of the nineteenth century the city of San Francisco was totally engulfed by an earthquake." ■ The sketch should be read in extenso by the curious, for it is, we believe, one of the few occasions upon which a humourist has unconsciously developed the prophetic instinct.

The extraordinary enterprise and energy of the American citizen is

The seen in the announcement Kelmbilitatiou that already the rebuilding oflhe t ity. of San Francisco has com-

menced. Even while the fires were burning their fiercest a meeting of bankers and merchants was held at Oaklands, to consider the question of rehabilitation of the city, and now it has been decided to rebuild in steel, and on a grander scale than ever. This recalls the rebuilding of Chicago, after the great fire of 1871, in itself a monument of American go-aheadness. As one chronicler has written :—": — " It is believed by many that the fire had for ever blotted out Chicago from the list of American cities; but the spirit of her people was undaunted by calamity, and encouraged by the generous sympathy and help from all quarters, they set to work at once to repair their almost ruined fortunes. Rebuilding was at once commenced, and within a year after the fire more than 40,000,000 dollars were expended in improvements. The city came up from its ruins more palatial, splendid, strong, and imperishable than before. In one sense the fire was a benefit. Its consequence was a class of structures far better in every essential respect than before the conflagration. Fire-proof buildings became the rale, the limits of wood were carefully restricted, and the value of the reconstructed portion immeasurably exceed.cd that of the city which. iiad been destroyed. "' With the Chicago experience to fall back upon, there is every likelihood of the rebuilding of San Francisco ecliusing all previous records. It is stated that the insurance loss from the San Francisco disaster will total £50,000,000 and as this presumably does not cover the Joss by earthquake, the complete destruction to property will certainly be enormously great. The Chicago fire consumed nearly 20,000 buildings, rendered homeless 100,000 people, entailed the loss of 200 lives, and destroyed property valued at £40,000,000. Next in magnitude comes the Moscow fire of 1811, the losses at which were estimated at £30,000,000. The great fire of London, in 1666, devastated a tract of 436 acres, and destroyed 13,000 buildings. These figures will make interesting comparisons when the actual damage caused in San Francisco is authoritatively made known.

An article on " Earthquakes in Great Britain," by Dr Charles An Analysis Davison, in the current of number of the Nineteenth Earthquakes. Century, makes interesting

reading at the present time. The writer apologises for his subject, on the ground that earthquakes in Great Britain are t>o few in number, and so trifling in their effects when compared with earthquakes in Italy and Greece, in the Philippines, or in Japan, in Chili, or in Central America — and, we hasten to add, in California. Dr Davison, reckoning by number and not by magnitude, recalls only 171 earthquakes in Great Britain during the last seventeen years, whereas Japan can count 8331 shocks in eight years ; Greece 3187 in six years, and the Island of Zante alone accounts for 306 earth tremors in a single year. Area for area, for every earthquake observed in Great Britain there are 82 recorded in Japan, and 256 in the kingdom of Greece. Centuries have elapsed since there was any loss of life as the result of a British earthquake, whereas Italy has a death-roll of more than 160.000 persons caused by earthquakes during the last 500 years, and Japan has lost more lives from the sea waves of a single shock than during the entire course of her war with China. All the move remarkable earthquakes of modern times have occurred in places remote fioni Great Britain. There was the Lima shock in 1746, and the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, in which from 30,000 to 40.000 persons perished. An earthquake \isited Calabria in 1857, causing the loss of 10.000 lives. A similar disaster overtook Peru and Ecuador in 1868. when some 25.000 persons perished, and in the island of Ischia, when about 5000 were killed. An earthquake shock was felt in England in 1884 which caused some damage to property in the Eastern counties, and particularly on the southeast coast of Essex. This shock, which wa3 felt over an area of at least 50,000 square miles, damaged more than 400 buildings in Colchester, and in the surrounding villages at least 800 houses were iftore or less seriously damaged. At

] Abberton. a few miles from Colchester, hardly a chimney was left standing, and in the neighbouring village of Peldon every house and cottage sustained some injury. Next in point of destructiveness to the Colchester shake comes — in English earthquake annals — the Hereford shake of 1»96. In Hereford alone 217 chimneys were fractured or overthrown, and the cathedral suffered injury. The shock was felt in 72 other places, scattered over an area of 723 square miles. The disturbed area was more extensive than that of any other known British I earthquake. Slight shorks ba\e since been felt— in 1901 at Inverness, in 1903 and 1904 at Derby, and last year at Doncaster. Indeed l)v Davison" declares that when all the areas in Eugiand disturbed by earthquakes during the last sixteen years are placed on a map they are • found to cover the greater part of the country. In the ii^hi of ihis record, the fears entertained by a few benighted folks in the Old Land Jhat New Zealand is a dangerous earthquake country would appear, in comparison, somewhaL absurd. ** Bnt the value of Dr Da\ison's article lies in the fact that for The Latest the last 17 years he has Kirthrjn.Ve been a sedulous student Th<ory. of the phenomena attending every Jinown British earthquake, and upon the data thus collected he has founded a theory which" certainly deserves consideration. Dr Davison gnes, as typical of nineteen out of c\ery twenty British earthquakes, the foi lowing description :—": — " At places near the centre of disturbances the first sign of the coming earthquake is a low sound like the sudden rising of the wind. Alj most immediately a faint trembling begins, such as is felt on a railway platform when an express train rushes by. Rapidly this increases in strength, the sound becomes louder, more rumbling ar.d I grating in character, and resembling that produced by the raoid passage of a traction engine or a 'heavy motor car. It is a sound as deep as almost to be more felt than heard. Then, after a lapse of four or five seconds from the start the tremors merge into sharp vibrations, accompanied by loud explosive crashes in the midst of the rumbling sound. These may last for two or three seconds, after which the vibrations shade off again into tremors, the sound becomes a mere rumbling, and finally all movement ceases, the sound dying away as a low monotonous groan like the last roll of very distant thunder. Farther away, at distances of from 50 to 100 miles from the centre, the phenomena are much simpler. The movement is, however, less rapid and jolting and more like that felt in a carriage with good springs travelling over an uneven road." One out of every twenty, British earthquakes is of a more complex nature, the shock consisting of two distinct parts, each part being similar to the shock of a simple earthquake. To earthquakes of this class the name of "twin", has been given, because the double shock is due j to two distinct impulses resulting from a | single generative effort. The waves of I an earthquake, as they radiate outwards from the place of origin, pass gradually through different degrees of intensity, the i degrees being made apparent by the severity of the shock experienced above ground. Investigators of earthquake phenomena in every land now keep a record of these degrees in the various places, thus making it possible to draw upon an earthquake map a series of isoseismal lines, or lines of equal intensit}'. In any earthquake the outer isoseismal lines are nearly circular in form, while the inner curves are elongated. These elongated isoseismal lines, according to Dr Davison's theory, imply an elongated seismic focus, while the direction of their longer axes indicates that of the greatest horizontal dimension of the focus. When considered in connection with the geological structure of the district affected, the significance of these elongated isoseismal lines at once becomes apparent. Their longer axes are then found to be parallel, j or very nearly so, to the axes of the great crust- folds of the underlaying rocks. ! The initiation of these folds dates back from long past geological ages, and their formation has proceeded slowly and , gradually ever since. In close connection ■ with the folds, are nearly parallel and perpendicular systems of faults or ' fractures, along which movements take place intermittently, the crust on one side advancing o\w that on the other by a series of slips. rHiher than by imper- J ceptible creeps. When it is considered that these faults are often many miles in length, and that the total displacement may amount to thousands of feet, even to miles; and when further it is remembered that in each individual slip the crust may not advance more than a fraction of an inch though it may by several feet, the student is able, though but dimly, to appreciate the enormous number of dis- j placements that must contribute to the growth of a great fault. If also it is ' borne in mind that the mass of rock , subjected to one of these slips may be enormous or comparatively small, and i that the friction thus engendered varies accordingly, it is easy to understand how the resulting vibration may produce a > shock that may be as weak as the faintest tremor ever fell in New Zealand, or on I the other hand as mighty as the great j convulsions which laid "Lisbon waste, ; which devastated Calabria, which ruined the coasts of Chili and Japan, which j has brought to nought, the magnificent i modern city of San Francisco.