The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-04-21
NATURAL CHANGES.

1t is said that Chicago is threatened with a
calamity that will more than balance all her
advances beyond the growth of st. Louis and
Cincinnati in "the progressive and continu-
Gus rise of Lake Michigan" More than one
of our river cities have long been, and are
still, secretly in dread of the natural changes
of the current that carries their life and pros
perity in its wholesome motion. Vicksburg
may be left some miles inland by cut across
the bend on which it is located, which Gen
eral Grant tried to use as means of conquest
prior to the siege that ended in Pemberton's
surrender. New Orleans has been thought
not improbable victim of shift OF the Mis-
sissippi into Bayou Lafourche, or one of the
narrow water lanes that drain of the
occasional enormous foods of the
Father of Waters" which would
leave the city on a dry bed or a
shallow pond, as helpless as a country vii
lage left out of the line of new railroad.
Chicago may be the victim Of change
little different in process, but quite as fatal
in effect, as the change OF the current OF the
Mississippi to the cities living on its
boundary. Such changes are not unknown
to savants by any means. Not sudden and
awful cslamities like the earthquakes that
sunk Lisbon away into the bowels of the
earth, or dropped Callao and Kingston to
the bottom of the harbors on which they
depended and on whose shores their sue
cessors are built, or like the planetary con-
vulsion that sunk the shores of Java aud
raised new islands in the straits of Sunda,
when Krakatoa let loose the accumulated
destructive force of years of volcanic and
seismic secretion away down in the recesses
of the earth, but slow, progressive changes
that never 60 backward, and add
graphy is made over and unacceptable.
We have striking instances of these little
changes going on from year to year and gem
eratian to generation, in the case Of Pompeii,
which at the Christian era was seaport,
lying right on the Bay of Naples and carry
ing on marine commerce with the rest of
the world. Now it is a mile inland. The
sea has shrunk or the land raised. For 100
years it has been accurately noted that the
water of the Gulf of Finland has been slowly
rising, so that rocks on the shore that were
once conspicuous are now nearly or wholly
covered. Occasional rapid changes, not
unlike tides, have been noticed in
the waters of Lake Erie and
other lakes. So there is nothing improbable
in the suggestion that Lake Michigan may
rise permanently far enough to cover the low
grounds of its harbor, and there is not much
of Chicago that would not be included in
that description. Itwould not take a per-
manent rise of more than few feet to cover
the reclaimed swamp and sand bars OF the
city site with water, and change 1.-THE Queen
City of the unsalted seas" into a sort of
watery Palmyra. with cat fish and musca-
longes sporting in the parlors OF Wabash
avenue, and timid boats tied up to chimneys
and smoke stacks. And "Ichabod' would
be written on the Courthouse and the de-
pots and the elevators, and what was left
available of the former pride of the lakes be-
come muddy imitation of Venice.