ON THE NORTHERN CAPE BRETON COAST. MClNTOSH. 43 



to the destruction wrought by the earthquake. The waves 

 were felt with diminishing effects at great distances, even 

 north as far as Norway, south beyond the Madeira Islands, 

 and west in the West Indies. 



Japan was visited by a severe earthquake in 1854. Its 

 focus was also evidently off the coast, for about a half hour 

 after the shock, a series of waves thirty feet high struck the 

 shore and destroyed the town of Simoda. From this spot 

 the waves radiated with diminishing force, travelling the 

 whole breadth of the Pacific to California. 



The Coast of Peru was devastated by a great earthquake 

 in 1868. The seat of disturbance was likewise off shore, for 

 in less than half an hour a succession of waves fifty or sixty 

 feet high rushed in and increased the work of destruction 

 of the earth-waves. These waves were felt thousands of 

 miles from the seat of origin, even as far as the coast of 

 Japan, 10,000 miles away. 



Manj^ other cases of such waves have been observed and 

 recorded by tidal gauges, such as that of 1877 at Iquique in 

 Northern Chile, and that of 1885 around Krakatoa. The 

 great disturbance of 1896 in the North Pacific will be recalled 

 by many, where 175 miles of the Japan Coast were laid 

 waste. A great amount of shipping was destroyed and 

 27,000 people lost their lives. 



These waves are caused by a dislocation of the earth's 

 crust beneath the sea. The break occurs most often where 

 the water deepens rapidly, as in the case of the western coast 

 of South America where a few miles off shore the water 

 suddenly plunges from the edge of the continental shelf to 

 the ocean abyss. Similarly, off the Japan Islands the descent 

 from the land platform to the Tuscorora Deep is very abrupt. 

 The evidence is abundant and strong that such a condition 

 of land and sea makes a line of weakness in the earth's crust 

 and here may, and does, occur faulting or slipping. As 



