The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-06-14
THE SAN FRANCISCO EARTH-
 QUAlKE
Growing Mountains and California
 Temblors.

I6mDlOTS.
 A Courier subscriber in far off Los Angeles, Cal, city of wonderfully rapid growth indeed, and which has such charms that New Haveners who have located there find 1t almost, If not quite, as good a place as New Haven to live in, sends the Courier the follow ing interesting article from the Cltro- graph of Redlands, paper well known to many In this city and West Haven. The article is from the pen of Rev. George Robertson, an able and influen- tial clergyman of that section, who has made much study of geological subjects and is emitted 1Growing Mountains and California Tembors," It is aD follows:
 The great massive movement of the earth which have given birth to noun tains, formed bounds to oceans and seas and shaped continents, continue to-day. Abundant evidence of this Is seen In the subsistence and elevation of sea coasts and in the volcanic fires of the Caribbean and Borneo regions, the Aleutian Islands and the Pacific coast of South America. To this must be tdded the striking geologic fact of the | two great earthquake belts of the globe. The first of these seismic zones crosses the West Indies, passes through the Mediterranean region, the Caucasus and Hlmalayas; the second zone em- braces the Pacific coast from Cape Horn to Japan and continues to the East Indies. It is worthy of note that the second earthquake belt possesses no live volcanoes in Western America. 1t may not be easy to explain why our volcanoes are dead in Western Ameri- ca while the Aleutian Islands and DOT tions of Alaska and South America pos sess volcanoes vigorously active. Though our western cones are many not one affords a reason to suppose it will ever become alive.
 The study of this earthquake belt ex- tending from the East Indies through Japan, along the Pacific coast to Val lparaiso, is of intense interest at the present moment.
 Dr. G. P. Becker, chief of the divi- sion of physical research of the United States Geological Survey, writes
 "Along the coast of California, at rela- lively short distances from the shore the shoal water suddenly becomes very deep, and from depth of few fath- oms changes abruptly to a depth of thousands of fathoms" At the edge of this abyss a submerged sea cliff eX- tends all the way from Japan to Chile, This sea cliff bounds the shoal water and marks great fault or continental upllft If the sea were to retreat some miles westward there would be ex- posed the growing plan of a new noun tain range In the Pacific. The moun-
 tain-making process which gave us the older worlds heights is still at work
 The Pacific border of the American
 continent is slowly experiencing noun.
 tain-fnaking movements
 During at least thousand years oi
 more our coast mountains and sea mar
 gins have been rising; This is proved
 by the sea terraces of Ensenada, Low
 CT California, and those marking oui
 sea shore in San Diego and Los An
 geles counties; San Francisco ant
 Alaska, and especially at Yakuta o where In 1899 an uplift of forty-sever
 feet took place in the brief space of on' {, month. The "date-fsh' add their tes ' timony in the form of burrows made I i, the cliffs now far above the rollins ', waves,
 These mountain-making movement of the coast result from the stress an'
 strain on the rock under the sea, a : well as that along the shore. Earth V quakes in California are signs of tn II rocks falling or moving. As a proof 0
 this mountain n-making movement bein ! frequent, we may cite the fact that tn Il Geological Survey has tabulated lis T of jars felt in California for a numbe : of years. These vary from twenty-fiv u to fifty each year. Since we have Il e living volcanoes, these seismic effect e show continuous rock pressure and ifs = sure fractures to secure relief. Tem B. blors are bound to occur when tn l. stress and strain on the rock becom r, greater than 1t can bear. It is clear tl Il more frequent the rock slips or fold
 the more frequent the quake will be
 but as a result the less severe will
 the jars. The longer the strain acct
 mulates and the larger the fault at or l. time, the more vigorous the shake. 4
 San Francisco the strain and stress ha lg long accumulated; the fault took plaC IS in one great shove resulting in a shar re severe destructive quake,
 IL The topography of the coast regio IL comprises a central valley, lying b' T. tween the Sierra Nevada and the set ot In this lies the Coast Range, a series D. mountain ridges with no we'll define TX axis. The ridges range from thrC SC thousand to five thousand feet elevi 10 tion. The base Is composed of gram n. overlaid with schist, sandstone, linn
 stone, cherts, dark shales and conglon ut crates. These extend all the way fro
 the cretaccous through the miocene 'n the alluvial deposits of the present da
 It is therefore clear that the elevatiC k, of the coast mountains must have b us gun in the later pliocene; for fresh w
 ter beds of pliocene gravel are wide k distributed on the coast ranges. Be-
 of fresh water travel, fossils of plan
 and trees witness to the recency of u
 formation. No better illustration of tl
 fossils of palm trees can be found lg the continent than the hundreds
 casts exposed in the out-croppings yo sandstone bluffs seen .on the ranch S- MT Walter Nordhoff, Lower Californi n- There a person may stand among t ot mute witnesses of an early mounta ilt and coastsmalking struggle which is n