Nature and Culture

by Harvey Rice

No part of the world is exempt from sudden calamities of a similar character. The earthquake experienced by the city of Antioch in Syria, in the year 626, destroyed two hundred and fifty thousand people. The great eruption of Mount Etna, in 1669, overflowed fourteen towns, containing from three to four thousand inhabitants each. The stream of lava which issued from the mountain was half a mile wide and forty feet deep, and swept everything before it, until lost in the sea. The earthquake at Lisbon, in 1775, killed sixty thousand persons in six minutes; the shock was felt in Switzerland, in Scotland, in Massachusetts, and on the shore of Lake Ontario. In 1783, a large river in Iceland was sunk into the earth by volcanic action, and entirely obliterated. In 1792, an earthquake in the island of Java sunk a tract of land fifteen miles long and six miles wide, carrying down with it forty small villages. In our own country and in our own neighborhood, in 1811, several islands in the Mississippi River, near New Madrid, were sunk by an earthquake, and the course of the river driven back eighteen miles, causing it to overflow the adjacent lands; about half the county of New Madrid, as well as the village, was submerged. Several new lakes were created, one of which was sixty miles long and several miles wide. The earth's surface rose in undulations like the billows of the sea, and with terrific utterances, opened yawning chasms, from which vast columns of sand and water, and a substance resembling coke, were thrown out. The whole face of the country in that region was materially changed. And, what is a little singular, one of the lakes thus created by the earthquake extended to the river at a point nearly opposite the famous Island No. 10, thus affording a natural canal by which the Union forces in the late civil war approached and took the island.

It is not improbable that the entire chain of our great northwestern lakes, from Ontario to Superior, were created by the volcanic collapse of a mountain range that once occupied the same localities. Of this fact there are plausible, if not irresistible, evidences to be seen in the volcanic character of the rocks at various points along the entire coast. Nor can it be very well doubted that subsequent volcanic action has elevated much of the coast into several corresponding ridges, from one to two miles apart, which distinctly mark the successive boundaries of these inland seas.

Nature removes mountains, or creates them, at pleasure. She also makes and unmakes lakes and rivers, to say nothing of oceans and continents. In California, and doubtless in other parts of the world, there are as many dead as living rivers. The miners of California have already discovered the old channels of a dozen or more dead rivers, as they call them, encased and sealed up in the very heart of the mountain ranges, and extending in some instances hundreds of miles in the general direction of the ranges, and leaping from mountain to mountain at a common level or grade. These ancient channels are filled with sand, gravel, and small bowlders, evidently worn and polished by long attrition. Some of the channels are a mile wide, or more, and from ten to one hundred feet deep. In the angles or eddies, the sands are found to be exceedingly rich in gold, sometimes yielding fifty dollars or more to the cubic yard. It is estimated that over five hundred millions of dollars have already been taken from the sands of these dead rivers, and that they are now yielding at least ten millions a year. It is evident that these dead rivers must have been living rivers long before the volcanic era arrived, which elevated the ancient valleys into mountain ranges, and depressed the ancient mountain ranges into valleys.

In the South-American earthquake of August, 1868, thirty thousand lives were lost, several cities entirely obliterated, and three hundred millions of dollars' worth of property destroyed. A tidal wave, more than forty feet deep, swept over the land and deposited, high and dry, and beyond recovery, several first-class ships; the effect of this earthquake was felt along the coast for a distance of six to seven thousand miles. In October of the same year, the city of San Francisco was visited by an earthquake, which shattered many buildings, and destroyed several lives. It is supposed that this was but a prolongation of the South-American earthquake.

In some parts of California and South America, thunder and lightning seldom occur, while earthquakes are frequent; in regions like these, earthquakes would seem to be a substitute for thunder and lightning. In all probability both are but electrical phenomena, differing only in the fact that the one is an earthquake, the other a skyquake. It is in plains and valleys that earthquakes prove the most destructive. Doubtless the solid material composing the mountain ranges affords a better conductor of electricity than the alluvial soil of the plains and the valleys; hence, while the one serves as a lightning-rod, the other becomes the battleground of conflicting elements. It may be that electrical forces are generated in the earth's interior, as well as in the atmosphere, and that the earthquake is but the shock produced by the restoration of an equilibrium. The earth and the atmosphere are essentially the same in their elements, and are ever contributing of their substance to the requisitions of each other.

When physical science shall be so far advanced as to explain the true causes of the earthquake, if it does not make man "master of the situation," it will doubtless place in his hands the power of avoiding, to some extent at least, the calamities which now so often befall life and property.

There can be no doubt that the earth is a physical necessity not yet fully developed; only about one-fourth part of its surface is land, the remainder water. Nearly three times more land lies north of the equator than south of it. Why this should be so, is not quite clear. In the course of the earth's future development, however, it is not improbable that additional continents and islands will appear, and the waters subside into narrower and deeper channels, thus giving to man, and to land-life generally, a wider domain. And yet the present seas were not made in vain, but have always abounded with plant-life and animal-life, though of an inferior order as compared with land-life. Life in itself is infinite, and appears in infinite varieties both on land and in the sea. Whether man needs more land for his use and future development, is difficult to say. At any rate, everything that exists has its mutual relations, and adapts itself to the ultimate aim of Nature,—the perfection of man.

In the Western Hemisphere, the mountains take the general direction of north and south; in the Eastern, the general direction of east and west. In the one hemisphere, the ranges essentially accord with the lines of longitude; in the other, with the lines of latitude. These mountain ranges are but continental watersheds, from which flows the elemental wealth that enriches the plains and the valleys. The rivers and their tributaries are the commercial agents. The rain and the frost are the miners whose labors will never cease until the mountains are levelled. The mountains also attract and guide the storms and modify their force, condense the mists, the raindrop, and the dewdrop, and thus aid in refreshing the valleys in connection with the heat of the sunbeams. In this way the seasons, as well as the elements of the soil, are so modified and vitalized as to give to man seedtime and harvest, and needful food to every "living and creeping thing."

In addition to the world of life that is visible, there is a world of life that is invisible,—a microscopic realm of animalcula, which "live and move and have their being" in every element of life, and in every life, and yet are so minute as to be imperceptible to the naked eye. These invisibles, or infusoria, abound everywhere and in everything. They pervade the sea, the land, the air. They swarm in every drop of water, and revel in every morsel of food. We can neither eat nor drink without infringing on their domain and consigning myriads of them, perhaps, to an unprovoked destruction. They are almost as various in grade, size, and shape, as they are numerous. Some are hideous, while others are comely. They feed on each other, the superior on the inferior, and are ever struggling for life and for the mastery. They engage in the "battle of life" to sustain life, and hold to the doctrine that "to the victors belong the spoils." It is an ascertained fact that a speck of potato-rot, the size of a pin-head, contains hundreds of these little ferocious animals, fighting and devouring each other without mercy and without cessation.

What seems still more surprising is that they probably have a perfect organization,—heart, lungs, stomach, circulation of blood, and are endowed, perhaps, with all the five senses. Infinite numbers of them, it is supposed, exist in so minute a form that no microscope, however great its power, can detect them. Nor need we doubt that even these living invisibles are beset with parasites vastly minuter than themselves, which feed and breed on their surfaces. In the very blood-circulation of the minutest, it is not improbable that other infusoria, still more minute, swim and prey upon each other. The uses for which this invisible world of life were created, though doubtless for a wise purpose, cannot be comprehended. Yet it is evident that every living thing, however minute, has a destiny of some sort, ever progressing, it may be, from a lower to a higher sphere,—from the material to the spiritual, from the finite to the infinite.