The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1871-07-29
The Earthquakes and Volcanic Eruption Of
the Philippine Islands-What Nexts

the Philippine IsIands-What Nexts
From the details given of the recent earth
quakes and volcanic eruption in one of the
Philippine islands, the spectacle, of its kind,
must have been one of the sublimest and most
terrific known for many years in that vast
volcanic archipelago of the Indian Ocean to
which the Philippine islands belong. As a
local disaster, if the whole of the little island
laid waste and depopulated by this fearful
visitation had been sunk in the sea 1t would
have been an affair OF small importance to the
world at large; but when we look into the ele-
mentary causes of these earthquakes and vol
canic eruptions, in connection with all the
strange phenomena of the last few years, or
even of the last few months, Sin the heavens
and in the earth and in the waters under the
EARTH" occurring here, there and everywhere,
all round the gobe-considering all these
things this awful scene of thunder, fire, lava,
ashes, flaming rocks, sulphur, opening chasms
and streams of boiling water in the distant
Philippines becomes matter Of great
moment to all the nations and tribes of men
upon our little planet.
Within the last few months there have been
disastrous floods in Australia and in other
islands of the Indian seas, destructive
typhoons along the Japan equatorial current,
severe earthquakes on the western frontiers of
China, ominous shakings along the volcanic
chains of South and Central America and
Mexico, and some little tremblings of the
ground at various points between San Fran
cisco and our North Atlantic seaboard.
Ruinous foundations from extraordinary rains
have been reported from Oregon, while fierce
swept up from Mexico along the tanks Of the
Rocky Mountains, giving los degrees in the
shade at Denver, nearly six thousand feet
above the sea. Meantime desolating drought
has brought upon Persia all the horrors in
their worst forms of famine and pestilence
and Buenos Ayres has just passed through the
terrors of a plague which has swept away one
fifth of it's late population.
We mention this plague as due to atmos-
pheric causes, and as therefore in the general
category of the atmospherical, electrical,
fuvial and subterranean elements we
are considering, in reference to these
droughts and plaques, or floods and
hurricanes, or earthquakes and volcanic
eruptions, recently occurring in various parts
of the globe. That these extraordinary phe-
nomena in the physical world, including the
moon in conjunction, exert powerful influence
over the minds as we'll as over the bodies of
men, cannot be doubted. Hence the wars and
revolutionary connections and the general
| development of the fighting propensities Of
men IN both hemispheres in these latter days.
Men of the mildest disposition heretofore, such
as Brigham Young, of Utah, have become
aggressive and pugnacious. Or take the ven-
cradle Horace Greeley, for instance-by
instinct meek and lowly vegetarian-and
| what do we find him now? He has come back
from Texas armed to the teeth, aching for q
| fight, thorough believer in jeff Davis, the
Ku Klux Klans and the carpet-baggers, and a
real bellicose bushwacker rampant in reference
to General Grant, Senator Conkling and Col
lector Murphy. Once upon q time our now
transmogrified philosopher held loaf of
bran bread and bowl of Westchester butter
milk to be dinner fit for king. Now one
would think he had travelled year or two
with the King of Dahomey, who eats his mig
gers, or with the fiery Toombs, of Georgia,
| and that he had been initiated into the Ku
Klux brotherhood, and that he lunches upon
tiger steaks and apple-jack seasoned with gun
| powder, so terribly rampageous do we find our
hitherto mild milk and water philosopher.
| The causes of this strange transformation
are in the air. They come from these visible
and invisible natural forces in the atmosphere
and the earth, and the sea and the moon, of
which we have been speaking. They may
also be due, to great extent, to the peri
odically recurring spots on the sun, which are
now showing themselves again; for men of
science inform us that these spots on the sun
have much to do with the cold winds and
clouds and heavy storms which have marked
this month of July as the coolest and wettest
July in these parts of many years. Unques-
tionably, with the physical perturbations that
have for some time and are still operating
over the world, in droughts and famines and
hurricanes, floods and earthquakes, the minds
of men are affected, and nations feel these
shocks, and the spirit of war is reused, in one
form or another, and prevails from our West
ern Indians to New York, from New York to
Rome, and from Rome to the inside barbarians
of the Corea.
Such are the reflections suggested by this
terrible outbreak of volcanic forces in the
Philippine Islands, for the causes of this
calamity underlie the earth's crust and are in
the enveloping atmosphere of our globe every
where over the land and sea. The next shake
may be in japan, or at Jerusalem, or Naples,
or in Peru or Mexico; but still we have our
fears for San Francisco.