The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1906-12-03
Unrest OF the Pacific.

The scanty reports which have been
brought from New Guinea Of devasta-
ton wrought by earthquake upon It's
northern and eastern coasts and upon
the adjacent Bismarck Archipelago may
reasonably be accepted as Identifying
the record made on October 2 at various
~observatories. Violent tremors were re-
corded in the early morning hours Of that
day at Sydney, New South Wales, and at
Perth, Western Australia. From Euro
pean observatories eo~noordant reports
were received from the Isle Of Wight and
from Laibach, the observer at the latter
place determining the seat OF the dis
turbance as 9,O62 miles from his observa-
tory, a Measure which corresponds very
closely with the space between Laibach
and New Guinea.
It is impossible to consider the disturb
ances Of the Pacific in the current year
a lacking some sort OF interrelation. The
bed Of that great ocean has long been
known as a seat Of plastic CONFUSION,
and its shores in particular have served
to outline a belt of almost incessant seis-
mic activity. Confining the attention to
such disturbances as were Of magnitude
sufficient to challenge the attention, we
have the following record for one-half
OF the year. San Francisco came clat-
tering down on April IS. On July 10
the new island was cast up in the
Bogoslof Islands in the Alaskan sea.
On August 10 Valparaiso crumbled in
ruins. On October 2 the mountains Of
New Guinea were rent asunder. To
these great movements might be added
a host of smaller evidences of the inner
might and throes Of the reeling earth.
Maugaah in Savai'i has been in renewed
activity; lin FIJI the hotsprings of eau have
burst forth with violence hitherto I'M
known; Japan has been fairly aquiver.
One scarcely needs Professor PICKER
mos theory that the Pacific bed repre-
sents the cavity left when the was
thrown of to recognize that this is a
region Of terrestrial adjustments as yet
far from stable. Whereas the beds Of
other seas are practically plane in their
pelagic depths. the bed Of the Pacific is
yet raw and deeply sculptured. Meas
ured from its abysmio valleys, the deep
est known upon earth, to its snow clad
SUBMITS Of 1000 feet and higher, its
masses OF ~extrusion are not only enor-
nous in the absolute, but they are barely
in equilibrium when compared with the
wide bases Of continental mountain
masses. Throughthese extruded masses
the molten matter is still forcing its way
to relieve the inner pressure, and at the
edges Of the tract the shock Of slip and
fault is commonly manifest.
So far as il is permissible to attempt
the explanation of phenomena yet in the
early o~bservational stage, it appears pos
sible to trace somewhat of the relation
subsisting between these several out
breaks of seismic violence which a half
of this year has recorded. The disasters
Of April, of July and of August marked
a disturbance Of the eastern edge of the
seismic basin, a series of violent new adj
justments of the pelagio foundation to
the abutting continental mass. Having
secured a new poise of equilibrium at n
verge, the pelagic basin has apparently
been under internal strain, which has
now communicated itself to the lines of
weak attachment at the western verge.
The eastern adjustment was marked by
three violent catastrophes. We lack the
data upon which to forecast movements
Of the earth, yet it would not prove sur
prising should other earthquakes occur
upon this western verge before the
Pacific basin has assumed a new poise
and new attachments above its under
lying magma.