The upraised cliff.—Upon the coast of southern California may be found all the features of wave-cut shores now in perfect preservation, and in some cases as much as fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea. These features are monuments to the grandest of earthquake disturbances which in recent time have visited the region ([Fig. 274]). Quite as striking an example of similar movements is afforded by notched cliffs in hard limestone upon the shore of the Island of Celebes ([Fig. 275]). But the coast of California furnishes the other characteristic coast features in the high sea arch and the stack as additional monuments to the recent uplift. Let one but imagine the stacks which now form the Seal Rocks off the Cliff House at San Francisco to be suddenly raised high above the sea, and the forms which they would then present would differ but little from those which are shown in [Fig. 276].
Fig. 276.—Jasper rock stacks uplifted on the coast of California (after a photograph by Fairbanks).
The uplifted barrier beach.—Within the reëntrants of the shore, the wave-cut cliff is, as we know, replaced by the barrier beach, which takes its course across the entrance to a bay. After an uplift, such a barrier composed of sand or shingle should be connected with the headlands, often with a partially filled lagoon behind it. Its cross section should be steep in the direction of the lagoon, but quite gradual in front ([Fig. 277]).
Fig. 277.—Uplifted shingle beach across the entrance to a former bay upon the coast of southern California (after a photograph by Fairbanks).
Fig. 278.—Raised beach terraces near Elie, Fife, Scotland.
Coast terraces.—Upon those shores where to-day high mountains front the sea, the coast may generally be seen to rise in a series of terraces ([Fig. 278]). This is notably true of those coasts which are to-day racked by earthquakes, such as is the eastern margin of the Pacific from Alaska to Patagonia. The traveler by steamer along the coast from San Francisco to Chili has for weeks almost constantly in sight these giant steps on which the mountains have been uplifted from the sea. In Alaska we are fortunate in having the history of the later stages in this uplift ([Fig. 279]). As described in a former chapter, portions of this shore rose in the month of September of the year 1899 in some places as high as forty-seven feet, to the accompaniment of a terrific earthquake and sea wave. Above the terrace which marks the beach line of 1899 there is a higher terrace of similar form now overgrown with trees, but none the less clearly to be recognized as a shore line of the past century which preceded in the long sequence the uplift of 1899.