THE GREAT SIERRA NEVADA FAULT SCARP. 621 



out of a population of about three hundred people, twenty-three were 

 killed and sixty injured. Goodyear has described in detail the 

 effect of this earthquake. After the event an examination showed 

 numerous fault lines, extending as a general thing parallel to the 

 base of the Sierras. Local areas sank, and in addition to the vertical 

 movement there was a horizontal one amounting in some instances to 

 from twelve to eighteen feet. Owing to the slight rainfall, the fault 

 scarps left by this earthquake may still be seen. They indicate 

 either a depression of the valley or an elevation of the Sierras to 

 the extent of several feet. Russell mentions a fault cliff near Mono 

 Lake of fifty feet which he thinks may date from this disturbance. 

 It is clear that an equilibrium has not yet been reached, and there is 

 no telling when the shocks may be repeated. These things forcibly 

 remind us that geological processes are going on to-day as in the 

 past. The common phenomena around us teach the same thing, 

 but we become so used to them that they are not noticed, and it is 

 only when our attention is called to some great example, something 

 out of the ordinary, that we realize the transitoriness of even the 

 great mountains. 



I have thus tried to trace in a general way the history of the fault 

 fissures and the great mountains and deep valleys produced by them 

 along eastern California from their inception in the Cretaceous 

 down to the present. Many of the geological phenomena connected 

 with this subject are without doubt displayed on a grander and more 

 imposing scale in this region than anywhere else in the United 

 States. 



It is related in William Volt's Vie d'un Homme (Carl Vogt) that one 

 evening Vogt, Helmholtz, and Kopp were talking about fish culture with 

 the proprietor of an inn near Heidelberg. The innkeeper, who practiced 

 in the art, expressed his contempt of all the books that pretended to treat 

 of it — saying that the whole lot was not worth a mug of stale beer. Some 

 were obscure, others wrong, and others incomplete ; and one could see in 

 an instant that they were all written by closet naturalists who had never 

 one of them caught a gudgeon. Helmholtz and Kopp enjoyed his remarks 

 greatly as a joke at the expense of Vogt, who had written a book on the 

 subject, and laughed at their comrade. The innkeeper was gratified at the 

 sigus of approval of what he had said, and continued : " Now I think of it, 

 gentlemen, I must make one exception. I have a book published by Brock- 

 haus at Leipsic, with pictures in the text, that is worth more than all the 

 rest together. It is written by a man who knows all about the subject, who 

 we perceive at once has seen with his own eyes and tried his methods him- 

 self. I will show it to you.' 1 The man withdrew and returned with the 

 volume. " Here it is ! it has just been published. It is called Die kiinst- 

 liche Fischzucht" (Artificial Fish Culture), " by Prof. Carl Vogt, professor 

 in Geneva ! " It was Vogt's turn to laugh. 



