Although Mr. Charles Darwin, one of the most conservative of scientists, usually insists that the elevation and subsidence of the earth's crust is accomplished by slow degrees and continues through long geological periods of time, yet in the report of his Geological Observations, he records some very important evidences of recent elevations and subsidences as having taken place quite suddenly. One instance is in connection with an elevation on the Island of San Lorenzo, off the coast of Peru near Lima, in which he reaches the conclusion that the beach on that island has been raised 85 feet since Indian men inhabited Peru.[[24]] He gives another instance of a recent elevation of land on the Island of Chiloe;[[25]] and still another on the Island of Lemus.[[26]] In speaking in a general way of the elevation on the western side of the South American continent, Mr. Darwin also says:
On the shores of the Pacific, upraised shells of recent species, generally, though not always, in the same proportional numbers as in the adjoining sea, have actually been found over a north and south space of 2,075 miles, and there is reason to believe that they occur over a space of 2,480 miles. The elevation on this western side of the continent has not been equable; at Valparaiso, within the period during which upraised shells have remained undecayed on the surface, it has been 1,300 feet, whilst at Coquimbo, 200 miles northward, it has been within this same period only 252 feet. At Lima, the land has been uplifted at least eighty feet since Indian man inhabited that district; but the level within historical times apparently has subsided.[[27]]
Coming to more recent seismic disturbances I call attention to the one which occurred in 1883, on an island in the straits of Sunda:
A great cloud was seen to rise above the island, and spreading out obscured the sun, while ash fell from the air. Upon the neighboring land the ground was shaken, while upon the low coasts, a great water wave rushed, destroying thousands of lives. Krakatoa, which had not been in eruption in this century, had again broken forth, with the most terrific explosion that man had recorded. Ash rose miles in the air, and spreading out, fell on the surrounding land and water, and for a while it was so thick upon the surface of the sea, in the Straits of Sunda, that the progress of vessels was impeded. So high did it rise that the light ash, floating about by the upper winds, staid suspended in the air for months, some of it falling in America and Europe. A great water wave, generated by the explosion, crossed the Pacific to the California coast, and it was observed on the shores of Africa and Australia. When the eruption had ceased it was found that Krakatoa had been split into two parts, one of which had disappeared into the air, leaving ocean water where there had been dry land. The part of the island that remained was covered with a deep coating of ash, and not a living thing was left, neither plant nor animal.[[28]]
Speaking of the same event W. J. McGee, vice-president of the National Geographical Society, and ethnologist in charge of the Bureau of American Ethnology, says:
This stupendous outburst cast up a cloud of gas and dust to a height of seventeen miles or more which darkened the sun for 150 miles in every direction, raised a sea wave reaching 135 feet in height on adjacent coasts, resounded in every direction for a thousand miles, and in one direction for 2,968 miles (if not indeed to the Antipodes), and sent out a series of great atmospheric waves rolling in both directions three times around the globe.[[29]]
The authority last quoted also says that the New Madrid earthquake of 1811-12 shook an area of a million and a quarter square miles; and that the Charleston earthquake of 1886 was felt over nearly one-half million square miles of land, and far out at sea. He gives at length also a description of the recent earthquake in the island of St. Vincent, West Indies, which shook all Martinique by the force of its explosion. The magnetic disturbances swept in swift undulations for thousands of miles, passed Maryland and Kansas in a few seconds, and reached Honolulu a minute or two later; while the ensuing rain of rock-dust stretched eastward a hundred miles beyond Barbadoes, westward to Jamaica, northward to Texas, and to the South American continent.[[30]]
The conclusions to be reached from the facts here presented are, first, that while elevations and subsidences of the earth's crust are usually accomplished by slow degrees and through long periods of time, it is also true that very extensive changes are effected by internal forces of the earth in a very short period of time; and second, that there is reason for the belief that the seismic disturbances described in the Book of Mormon as taking place at the crucifixion of Messiah, effected very great changes in the physical character of the land occupied by the Nephites. If it should be contended that while the cases of earthquake disturbances cited in this chapter tell of widespread areas of country being suddenly and greatly effected, yet nowhere (except in the case of Atlantis) do those changes approach the magnitude of the physical changes called for in the views here set forth, the answer would be that nowhere else in the records kept by men is there an account of such terrible, such long-continued, and such widespread cataclysms in the earth as those described in the Book of Mormon. The terrible seismic disturbances which at the time of Messiah's crucifixion took place in the western hemisphere continued through three hours of time (instead of a few minutes, as in the case of some of the most noted earthquake instances cited above); and affected the western continents from end to end, and were followed by three days of total darkness.[[31]] And as the forces then operative surpass in their magnitude and time of continuance all other known instances of the kind, so too, may it be reasonably argued that the changes would be correspondingly greater than those effected by similar instances of less magnitude and continued through briefer periods of time.
In concluding this chapter—even though I have not yet arrived at the argumentative stage of my treatise—I would suggest that the cases of seismic disturbances here cited are sufficient both in their character and extent to warrant belief in the possibility of the terrible catacylsms described in the Book of Mormon, and that they effected great physical changes in the continents of America.