The Helena independent. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943, 1890-04-14
new YORK IN DANGER.
How an Earthquake or a Cyclone
Would Tear Things to
Pieces There.
More Destruction Would be Pro-
duced Than Anywhere Else
on the Globe.
The Tall and Weighty Buildings Would
Bury the Population in a Mass
Of Rnins.


stories. Erasmus remarked of Amsterdam.
which was built on piles driven into the
mud, that he had seen town where the
people were like crows on the tree-tops,
says the Cincinnati Enquirer, but New
York is putting up the most dizzy and
weighty structures upon the smallest pos
sible pieces of ground, SO that scientific
man lately remarked to me: "If an earth
quake ever strikes the city of New York it
will produce more death and ruin than
anywhere on the globe where an earthquake
has struck
You remind me,'' said I, ''of these DESC
late and gruesome reformers who are tell
ing US that the surplus will be expended in
few months, whereas they never told us
that there would be any surplus six months
before it was coming. They are not going
to stop building, apprehend, in New York
for fear of earthquakes, which have never
yet come to Manhattan island.''
However, fell to rejecting myself
whether an earthquake would come to Man
haitian Island at any time, now or far in the
future. / did not see any sound reason to
apprehend any earthquake in this quarter.
We have had earthquakes along the tidal
alluvial sand-bar country, which have come
CD 4oI AOLOA 40 4Jd1UlIAOIC, duN, RclA laps,
Philadelphia. Our worst earthquake in the
east has been at Charleston, where the
mountain range which defines the solid
limits of the continent is a great ways in
land. The Charleston earthquake was
really big thing, and we can afford for
the rocky framework of this continent. 1t is
100 miles from Charleston to Columbia, and
thence to the mountains it is at least 14O
miles, or, we may say, about 300 miles
from the seat OF the late earthquake to
the rib of the continent, which is the Blue
Ridge.
ever. you see that same mountain almost
overhanging the city; what is called the
Orange mountain in New Jersey is the east
ern dixie of the Allegheny ridge. In short,
New England and tidal New York are the
the ocean. The rock-line then recedes and
it is 100 miles west of Philadelphia, forty
miles west of Washington, which is itself
far inland upon an estuary; and when we
arrive at Charleston, as l have said, the
mountains are $50 miles inland. If we are
threw large part of Charleston had some
relation with the Gulf stream and the vo' :
canic mountains of the West Indies al
Central America, there is no great proba-
bility that our granite mainland has ever
been or ever will be affected from the san 9
The area of earthquakes and eruptions is
tolerably we'll defined. San Francisco has
felt earthquakes and been greatly dwarfed
by them, and since the two earthquakes
out there during the present generation
they have ceased to build high houses on
that coast. The volcanic zone seems to
embrace the Sandwich Islands and co.
terminus parts of the Pacific. Caracas and
Lisbon constitute two centers of an clips Q,
where the earth has been greatly disturbed
within historic memory. But the forma-
ton of the Allegheny mountain chain,
which constitutes the eastern dixie of the
mississippi valley, would appear from geo
logical criticism to be altogether different
from the volcanic formations of the tropics
and the Cordilleras. It seems to be the
idea that the Alleghenies were once high
table land with a soft under stratum, and
that the plateau fell down like piece of
bad masonry, and left the chains to catch
each other where there were hard parts.
thus constituting the stretch of tolerably
uniform ranges through our western Middle
States. The trend of the Allegheny chains
is from about Chattanooga to the Hudson
river, near the city of New York, and thus
come chains are found taking in the whole
breadth of New England, from almost
within sight of the sea coast back to the re-
gion of Canada.
The city of New York is built upon
islands and bars of hard gneiss which have
been covered with sand in time. and, there
fore, you can strike between the bars of
rock here and there and find either quick
sand or we'll water. There is no analogy
to warrant the belief that New England,
New York City, or the region of the Allie
ghenles are ever to suffer from other than
universal electrical and caloric conditions.
There seems to be no record that the city
of New York ever had an important earth
quake. Hence, the establishment of these
high buildings on the island of New York
is fairly conservative, and the same class of
buildings are put up in London and in the
main centers of Europe. and wherever cheap
coal and invention justify and stimulate
elevators to supplant stairways.
New York is very narrow island, and
where the island is the least narrow it is
probably the least solid; that is to say, the
expansions of this island towards the East
river are quite probably due to bars forintd
by the confluence of waters through the
Sound and the East river and the Harlem
river. Long island appears to be a gravel
formation, something in the nature of drift
or dlluvlal, which is subject to the action
of the water, and moves about. But the
mountains in northern New York, such as
the Adlrondacks, were described by Agassiz
as the oldest dry ground on the GLOBE One
of his lectures, entitled America, the Older
Continent" shows that the Adirondacks are
the oldest land and the hardest land on
earth; they were long called Azoic, because
no fossil remains or shells or rudiments OF
organic life We're visible there
The Blessing Of Strong Nerves