The San Francisco call., 1895-11-17
A High Cliff Towers Over the
Spot Where Once Was a
Sandy Beach.
CAPTAIN WESTDAHLS THEORY
He Believes That Portion of the
Island Was Undermined by an
Immense Spring.

SANTA BARBARA, CAL, Nov. 16.-
Captain Westdahl of the Coast Survey re-
turned to the mainland to-day from San
Miguel Island, whittier he was sent to
make an examination of Cuylers Harbo1
and note the changes caused by the sub
terranean upheaval last March. The cap
tain is in sense under sealed orders and
the text of the report he will make to his
chief cannot be given to the press nor to
the public, but through people with
whom he has been associated on the island
the result of his observations has been cor
rectly ascertained.
A CALL correspondent went to San
Miguel late in March to examine. while
they were still fresh, the evidences Of the
violent subterranean action that occurred
in Cuylers Harbor on or about March 8.
At that time photographs were taken and
careful measurements made, and this data
has been placed at the disposal of the
Coast Survey to not only aid in determin-
ing the character of the great convulsion,
but also to assist in settling another prob
lem even more complex-the lasting ma
ture of the alterations of the harbor, and
ing the sudden encroachment upon it.
THE CALL correspondent found that near
the southwest curve of Cuylers Harbor
the perfect crescent of the shore line was
broken by great bank of earth, sand ana
rock 400 feet long and 800 feet wide in the
center. Instead of the smooth, sandy
beach, which formerly existed, there was
at the base of this great newly formed
bluff rubble of powders and rocks, many
OF them weighing several tons. The outer
most point of the upheaval was marked by
triangular-shaped reef, which rose
twenty-five feet above the water at high
tide. In the face of the bluff was a ledge
of blush cement rock some thirty feet
high.
In and upon all of these newly revealed
rocks were putrefying oysters and other
shell fish, showing that they had come
from the harbor's bed. A hundred feet
back from the water over the bluff was a
drying salt pool, where dozen or two of
large surf fish were decaying. Thousands
of tiny marine shells, with their half-de-
cayed contents, were scattered over the
top of this bluff, then sixty feet in height,
and around the debris of the last tide.
The boathouse, which formerly stood
near the waters edge and facing due east,
was behind this bluff, with the ground on
which it stood, and the fence of little
sheep corral near it had shifted about until
it was four points of the compass from its
original position.
The hillside above was rent and fur
rowed as if by some plutonic force, and
along the edge of the cliffs, 500 feet above,
the entire hill had dropped away, leaving
exposed a perpendicular face-a sheer fall
of some seventy feet.
Upon the top of the newly formed bluff,
near the water, at the time when it was
first found, great rock of peculiar forma-
ton, weighing some six tons, was found,
which had formerly stood on the beach,
barred only at low tide.
At the time of the CALL correspondents
inspection the tides had undermined the
bluff, so that the rock had again fallen;
but it lay above the tide, with dried sea-
weeds clothing its face and dead marine
life in its crevices.
Captain Westdahl has examined all this
region as carefully as his time and limited
facilities would permit. He fully verifies
all of the observations made by THE CALL
in March. Indeed, in conversing concern
ing these changes, he remarks that while
at first sight the changes impressed him as
slight compared with the proportions of
the harbor. their magnitude impressed
him more and more as he paid closer
attention to them. Winds have blown the
sand bluff, water has undermined it and
time has somewhat settled it, but it is still
of colossal proportions and its original
measurements are not far changed.
Captain Westdahl ventures, however, a
new and interesting theory as to the
causes of the great upheaval. By refer
ence to the old coast survey map and the
testimony of witnesses he finds that above
and back of where the upheaval took
place, on bench on the hillside, Captain
Nidevir's old ranchhouse ana ranch build
ings stood. These were long since re-
moved and the constant shifting of the
sands which composed SO large portion
of the islands territory has completely
filled the bench and made it part of the
smoothly sloping hillside. Yet in this
locality there was a flowing spring of
water. This has been unseen for years.
1t was invisible last March, but to-day it
is gushing out of the hillside by the boat
house and has cut channel through the
upheaval itself. He reasons that this
stream long buried, but constantly flow
ing, may have followed out vast subterra-
mean chamber and that last March the
weight of the hillside, consisting of thou
sands of tons of earth and sand. fell upon
the underlying stratiication with such
force that the sudden depression along the
shore caused the harbor bed to tilt up. :,
This is the exact reverse of the theory
before advanced, but it is interesting and
plausible.
1t has hitherto been assumed that the
seismic shock which threw the harbor bed
into the air created vacuum which swept
away the foundations from the hillside, so
that they slipped down to fill the hole in
the harbor. Should the report that on
March or an earthquake shock was felt
on the other channel islands be verified,
this, together with the fact that Colima's
eruption occurred on the same date, would
break down Captain Westdahl's theory,
which he merely advances as a guess and
not at all as scientific certainty.
PLANT OF A MONTICITO GIRL