The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1871-07-12
The T'broes or Nature.

The present and past years. 1870 and 1871,
seem to form such period. On both hemi-
spheres events Of scarcely centennial occur
renee have recently excited attention and
alarm. The logs of sea-going vessels record
numerous startling phenomena in mid-ocean.
The most violent and memorable cyclones have
been chronicled in our columns, reported by
the masters Of vessels And the daily and
admirable bulletins of our Signal Service have
brought us numerous and exact accounts of
many storms and tornadoes on land. The
earthquake has added its terrors to the story,
and in many places where from time imme-
mortal there had been no sign or wonder in
heaven above or on the earth beneath to dis
turb the serenity Of the popular mind there
have been, in the period we allude to, por-
tents in the skies and shakings and snkings
of the very crust of the earth on which man
erects his costlest ediices and the monuments
which he expects to be ''more lasting than
brass"
1t is not our purpose to follow the example
of the false prophet of London, who, in the
middle Of the eighteenth century, taking as
pretext the then recent and unprecedented
shocks of the continent and of England by
earthquake, proclaimed an impending doom
and the wreck Of all things. We rather think,
with Humboldt that the vulgar suggestion of
universal disaster and the breaking up of the
cosmical machinery at every strange turn in
nature is the mark of charlatan in science.
But these mysterious onvulsions of nature
need to be studied for the sake of science and
popular information. The last two years have
been strangely marked meteorologically 1t
was in our winter of 1869 (the midsummer of
the southern hemisphere) that the British
photographic Office found it necessary to
issue special circular to all vessels in the
Australian trade, warning them of unusual
and Immense icebergs that had drifted out of
the Antarctic Ocean right athwart their home
ward path. One of these monster ice islands
was in the shape of the letter J, sixty miles
long and forty miles wide, and presenting its
open part to the homeward-bound sailor.
Such an ice mass had not been seen since
Wilkes Antarctic voyage The phenomenon
of 1869 indicated an immense precipitation of
dislodged Antarctic ice into the equatorial
ocean. This may, doubtless, be regarded as
one and mighty element of atmospheric and
oceanic disturbance.
The extraordinary heat which was necessary
to unl0ose 80 much ice from the South Pole in
December, 1869, seemed to have prevailed in
the North Polar regions when the sun crossed
the Equator in the spring of last year for the
scientific reporter of the Scottish Meteorologi-
cal Society, stationed at Stykkisholm, Iceland,
stated officially that the summer of 1870 was,
Perhaps the most remarkable on Icelandic
record for Its high thermometric range. And
and large drifts of ice and icebergs from the
Greenland coast last year deceived the saga
ciOus commander of the Inflated steamer City
Of Boston and caused her yet unexplained
destruction. This ice from the Arctic Ocean
has been a second agent of disturbance. The
unusual arrival of spitzbergen ice of the
coast of Iceland in 1869 caused great hurri-
cane. ''the severest, according to the reporter,
shat has appeared at Stykkisholm in the
memory of man." And, just as this local
hurricane was caused by single icsberg, the
agitations of the atmosphere all over the
Northern Atlantic last year were, perhaps.
caused by the whole body of descending
ice, projected from both poles towards
the Equator. The original cause
Of these extreme temperatures at the
poles is one Of those mysteries yet concealed
behind the ice barriers Of the two yet unex-
plored frigid zones. But it is easy to see that
the atmospheric ocean has been agitated and
convulsed beyond measure, and that it has
hardly recovered from the shock-a fact wit
messed by such tornadoes and marine cyclones
as are almost daily heralded.
We have spoken chiefly of the meteorologi-
because, we believe, the other phenomena of
the sinking and quaking of the earths crust
have generally had an atmospheric origin
1t is beyond dispute that the sea of subter-
ranean fire which everywhere underlies the
surface of the earth has its tides, its ebbings
and howings and periodic commissions as
truly as does the atmospheric ocean and the
recent disturbances in South America may be
due to this source. During the present CEN
fury the whole coast of Chile has been sub
ject to marked and sudden changes Of level
In 1887, after the destruction of Valdivia by an
earthquake, the sea bottom was found to
be raised in some places more than eight
feet. At Valparaiso, in 1922, for consider
able distance along the coasts of the continent
the ancient bed Of the Pacific was laid bare,
and the coast Of Chile was permanently up
heaved. What gigantic force, which, to
uplift this coast had to move the majestic
chain Of the Andes, and among the rest the
colossal mass of Aconcagua, twenty-four
thousand feet in height!
This appalling display of energy, which