The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-11-01
THE EARTHQUAKE ZONES

In casting about for compensations, actual
or potential, that may help us to bear more
cheerfully the evils of our present situation,
not the least uncomfortable solace which
comes to view is the fact that, according to
historic record, our geographical position is
not included in the earthquake zone of the
northern hemisphere. 1t would seem that
we are not far enough north to be within the
sweep of the disastrous waves and shocks in
cident to the belt indicated by earthquakes
at Mityline and Lisbon in the Old World, and
at New Madrid and San Francisco in the New
World and that, on the other hand, we are
not far enough south to be touched fatally by
the throbs, heavings, explosions and engulf-
ments that have served to describe with mo-
numents of ruin the belt which comprises
Peru, Ecuador, Venezuela, Central America
and portion of the Antilles.
To be sure, the precise subterranean condi-
tons that determine the occurrence, the
course or the effects of earthquakes, have up
to this time altogether baffled scientific inves-
tigation. Indeed, far from having mastered
the physiology and anatomy of this wondrous
structure, the globe, on whose convexity man
struts his brief hour, and dreams out his lit
tie dream, science has not yet penetrated the
thickness, or explored the mysteries, of its
epidermis. Nevertheless, there is positive,
though indefinite, pleasure in knowing that
we occupy medium of presurhptive safety be-
tween the historically ascertained lines of ter
restrial perturbation by which populations
have been destroyed and cities have been
swallowed up or reduced to fragments As
we cannot, at the present inexplicable con-
juncture, boast of any other happy medium,
or even rejoice with the grim joy of wretches
who are conscious at having arrived at the
extremity of an evil flight, and therefore at
the threshold of something better, let us by
all means make the most of this knowledge
for purposes of mental comfort and moral
stimulation. Let us be grateful that, while
stretched on the rack, we are spared the ex-
quisite misery of knowing that we are to
be roasted at the stake let us thank Heaven
that we are not compelled to contemplate the
prospect of having all that the voracity of
the carpet-baggers may leave of us and of
our substance ground to powder, or gulped
down in lump, by the jaws of an earth
quake.
In purely commercial aspect, the inter-
mediary place occupied by New Orleans and
the territory surrounding it is fact of no
small practical Importance. Since the dam
aging and ominous manifestations of earth
quake in San Francisco, some portions of
that city are deemed no longer safe for habi-
tation, and the value of its real estate, every
where and of all descriptions, has been dis
turbed and more or less depressed. And all
other cities, from the Pacific to the Atlantic,
comprised within the same earthquake zone,
not excepting New York, Philadelphia and
Baltimore, Cincinnati, Louisville and st.
Louis. but more especially including cities
which are situated within the volcanic plains
of Kansas, Colorado and Utah, and similar re-
gions, lying between the Seth or 37th and the
the 10th or 41st degrees of latitude must suffer
some measure of commercial detriment from
the fact of presumptive liability to disastrous
visitations of earthquake.