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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1884)
08 THE WEST SHORE. open a fissure in the crust, from a fountain of water to tho ocean of fire, then the water being suddenly converted into steam, with not room enough in which to expand, other shock will follow, attended by upheavals, earth quake waves and volcanic disturbances. Tlie will con tinue for a shorter or longer period, and be slight or heavy, according to the amount of water precipitated, the size of the fissure and other conditions. There is another factor lx'loiiL'iiiff to the chain of causes which produce earthquakes, in my opinion, which I do not find mentioned by scientists, find yet I think imjsirtaiit. If I am in error no harm can result from alluding to it, whereas, if correct in my hypothesis, science may 1m? Is'iielited. Therefore, I will submit it fr tho consideration of those who are greatly my sujK'riors. Our present ideas of inavitation were siiL'L'ested bv w Sir Isaac Newton, who maintained that every atom of mailer in the universe was attracted by, and gravitated towards, every other atom of matter, in necordniwe with certain fixed laws. Kepler and Newton suggested the uiea oi centripetal and centrifugal forces, the latter force tending to propel tho earth through space in a straight line, the former (the attraction of the sun) tending to l-n.,-,, or uraw, uie earth away at a right angle from the direction of the latter. These two forces acting concur rently, the result is tho earth moves in a curve, a sort of compromise direction, around the center, or sun. It frequently hapns that the surior planets of our wlar system arrive n-ar a conjunction with each other In such a case all tho force of this attraction is exerted to draw our earth out of her orbit towards them, but fail to consequence of MK anMp U ovem,me &Q m-i n aviU,ti,,u truth, the conclusion is unavonlable that then, is a powerful tension exerted ,x,n f earths crust The next deduction i, equally Z r ve-namely. that a cracking of the crust, i, some I' wber it Is weak, is likely to occur. FiuallvTi! h, the bonml of m yi tothe fir and U.en an earthquake results. On several wvasions I bnve oll that earthquakes havXn cuIent w.thU.ea.nfigurations of the planet asT for H,wnUsI, and hvo Uvu smxfu nr h-iuakea by calculating the tuTo tl Zw J-- I January. 1S71.SI ntj . i t zzt M'""if - in my hypothesis that it is a factor in the great chain of causes that operate to produce earthquakes.. I have dwelt somewhat at length on earthquakes and volcanic disturbances, because without a general idea concerning them it is impossible for the non-scientific reader to have an intelligent understanding of the tnodut operandi by which the giant forces in Nature have been at work on the earth's crust, preparing it as an abode for man. And this evolution, so sublimely Brand ia t;n going on. I have been a teacher for more than forty years, and have learned that relaxation is of great advantage to students. So I will indulge in a little intellectual recre. ation, giving free scope to the wings of fancy, while I try to picture, in the poetry of prose, how this earth came into existence. First, let us take the highway of science and travel back through the untold eons of time. We are poised in space near the Pleiades (" seven stars "), in the constella tion Taurus. Robed fn the brightest garments of imagi nation, with eyes that are telescopic, having the wings of an angel, we start from Taurus, fly at the rate of a million of miles a minute, and yet years must elapse before we can reach the boundaries of what is now our solar system. We arrive here. All is void. There is no sun, no moon, no earth nor sister planet Gas and vapor are every, where, but solids and liquids nowhere. Millions of ages More there had been a central orb and its train of worlds, a heavenly battalion wheeling through space with a speed that almost defies the power of thought But the bounds of their existence had been fixed. One by one, as their hour of dissolution arrived, the planets returned to the central orb-the parent that gave them birth. As they impinged uixn her disc them was rannA. flush. and in the wink of an eye each had been dissolved into iw original primates, molecules, atoms and gas. Then, by the operation of an infinite force, a property of the parent planet, the great central orb was also dissolved, and we are cazine in imamnAtinn m, th mntr vnM in boundless space. hat an awful telescopic, cannot pierce it No brain can comprehend . immensity, tsiiently reposing, like the storm forces before a cyclone. than a hundred thousand million miles in diameter, floats in space. Intensely heated by the awful catastrophe which dissolved the old worlds, aU the metals and min erals, all the fluids and solids, float lazily in clouds of vapor. Tliev lmvfl tvn their heat is still intense. But now. while w am u: : -. hng process condenses a single atom. We see it not, nor can we without the aid of a microscope that magnifies hundw1a ,j: n , Tl i- maiueiers. jonaensauon go Btora like a celL beim mnifii, l nptena is termed and slowlv it,o mi. .L . ' J0W8 8twWy towards it Now we can see it the mauest speck possible to perceive, It is revolving and Pwnty. As th windmill rv1. thfl action