SOME FAMOUS EARTHQUAKES 



five feet above the level of the plain of the Mississippi. 

 Many years after the great shocks, smaller ones were 

 felt ; and even now scarcely a year passes without slight 

 tremors in this region, and small fissures are still formed 

 in the ground. 



It must be repeated that the great earthquakes are not 

 those of which most is heard. The earthquake of San Fran- 

 cisco which did such widespread damage because it took 

 place in the neighbourhood of a thickly populated city was, 

 after all, less in magnitude than the Sonora earthquake of 

 1887, which took place in a great expanse of desert country 

 in which few people lived and few towns had been built. 

 But this earthquake was felt all over the countries of 

 Mexico and the State of Arizona ; and a range of moun- 

 tains, the Sierra Teras, was uplifted between faults which 

 opened upon either side. Millions of cubic feet of rock 

 were thrown down from the slopes of the mountains into 

 the deep canons and water-courses, and cliffs of hard rock 

 were shattered and split as though by a charge of giant 

 powder. The Yakutat Bay earthquake in Alaska changed 

 the whole face of the country over thousands of square 

 miles during September, 1899 ; and along the shore of 

 the bay the shore showed that in some cases it had been 

 lifted from five to thirty and in some cases even fifty feet. 

 New reefs and islands were formed ; and a study of the 

 country and the coast-line seems to show that from time 

 to time this neighbourhood, like the beaches south of Val- 

 paraiso, is being lifted by some agency, perhaps the gradual 

 elevation of a continent, perhaps by continuous earth- 

 quake action. 



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