My experiments with volcanoes

by Thomas Augustus Jaggar

This kind of gradation is certainly like the transitions from submarine eruption to continental uplift, crowned with volcanoes, so characteristic of Japan, the Aleutians, California, and Italy. It is impossible to think of it, when we consider water depths of 4,000 fathoms, and a step upward to such altitudes as the New Zealand alps, all linear for a distance of several hundred miles, except in terms of the faulted deep earth crust. And seismologists tell us that that crust is 1,800 miles deep.

The associations made on this trip were destined to have far-reaching effect in meetings with New Zealand scientists at later dates. I met Professor Bartrum of Auckland; the officials of the New Zealand Geological Survey; Dr. Ernest Marsden, distinguished physicist who had worked with Rutherford in England; and Dr. C. A. Cotton, physical geographer and author. Cotton showed us the elevated shorelines of Wellington associated with the big earthquakes of 1851. Other personages were Professor Speight, geologist of Christchurch College, and in Dunedin, Professor R. L. Jack, physicist of Otago University and our host. Dr. C. E. Adams, government astronomer of Wellington, we were to meet again on Tin Can Island in 1930, during the United States Eclipse Expedition. Dr. J. MacMillan-Brown, chancellor of the University of New Zealand, and his daughter entertained us in Christchurch; and he later visited us several times in Hawaii in the course of his extensive travels.

I was glad to stimulate volcanology in New Zealand and pleased when there eventually appeared the splendid work of Dr. L. I. Grange, on the “Rotorua District,” with a project for geophysical surveys made imperative by the Napier earthquake disaster.

Before this chapter is closed, some personalities of the first decade of the Observatory should be mentioned. Foremost was L. A. Thurston, founder of the Volcano Research Association and its president for many years. It was his interest and enthusiasm coupled with that of the other members of the Association that made the Observatory possible. Prominent among those members was L. W. de Vis-Norton, for many years secretary of the Association and a devoted apostle of volcanology.

Mrs. Isabel Jaggar, from 1917, was my helper not only as wife and amanuensis, but as general assistant at the Observatory. She could operate instruments, take notes at the pit, keep the record books, and act as buffer against an overinquisitive public.

There was Demosthenes Lycurgus, genial Greek host of the Volcano House, who did all in his power to help us, by grants of lands, raising money, and personally promoting science with all the vigor of his wonderful personality. He went home to Greece to be married, and alas, died during his honeymoon. Later came my good friend George Lycurgus, who still operates the Volcano House.

Colleagues of the founding decade included H. O. Wood, who came from Berkeley in 1912, acted as seismologist and geological assistant, and established a seismological bulletin. He left to enter the army in 1917. In years to come Wood established in Pasadena under the Carnegie Institution one of the great seismographic laboratories of the world, and his name became coupled with a California Institute of Technology physicist to name the Wood-Anderson seismograph. Later came R. H. Finch who had worked with Dr. Humphreys of the Weather Bureau in Washington and had been a flight meteorologist in Ireland during the first World War. He was assigned by Marvin to me as assistant in 1919, when the Congress took over our work for the U.S. Weather Bureau.

Finally, I should like to name the numerous workers of the U.S. Geological Survey in topography and geology, notably Birdseye, Burkland, Stearns, Wilson, Clark, Meinzer, and Macdonald. These men brought to reality my Geological Survey estimate of 1899, when I recommended to Walcott a survey of the Hawaiian Islands.

The Hawaii geologic survey included investigations of water, highways, and minerals, and was to map lavas, volcanic processes, and island growth. The annual cost of the work had been estimated at $22,000, including $6,300 for salaries in geology and $10,000 for the total cost of topography study, or $90,000 for five years. The project was begun in 1909 in cooperation with the Territory of Hawaii. In 1951 the mapping was completed and the cost had been many times the original estimate.

Among visitors who contributed to the Observatory work were Sidney Powers, a voluntary observer who had been one of my students in Boston. He explored and published on many volcanoes around the world and followed me in Sakurajima and the Aleutian Islands. He later became an outstanding petroleum geologist of the Amerada Company in Tulsa. Arthur Hannon, an architect from Cleveland, acted as a volunteer mapper, and for months aided with sketches of the changes in Halemaumau. William Twigg-Smith, an artist from New Zealand, joined us in the lava-sounding experiment and made numerous sketches and paintings. He later became the illustrator and photographer for the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association. Dr. A. L. Day of the Geophysical Laboratory visited us repeatedly, in association with gas chemist E. S. Shepherd. He wrote important monographs, along with E. H. Allen the chemist for the Carnegie Institution, on the Yellowstone and Lassen National Parks, and on Geyserville. Allen came to the Observatory for critical analysis of the steam of Sulphur Bank.