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The portion of the earth’s surface convulsed by this earthquake is estimated by Humboldt to have been four times greater than the whole extent of Europe. The shocks were felt not only over the Spanish peninsula, but in Morocco and Algeria they were nearly as violent. At a place about twenty-four miles from the city of Morocco, a great fissure opened in the earth, and the entire village, with all its inhabitants, upward of 8,000 in number, were precipitated into the gulf, which immediately closed over its prey.
The earthquake was also felt as far to the westward as the West Indian islands of Antigua, Barbados, and Martinique, where the tide, which usually rises about two feet, was suddenly elevated above twenty feet, the water being at the same time as black as ink. Toward the northwest the shock was perceptible as far as Canada, whose great lakes were all disturbed. Toward the east it extended to the Alps, to Thuringia, and to Töplitz, where the hot springs were first dried up, and soon after overflowed with ochreous water. In Scotland the waters both of Loch Lomond and Loch Ness rose and fell repeatedly. Toward the northeast, the shock was sensibly felt throughout the flat country of northern Germany, in Sweden, and along the shores of the Baltic.
At sea, 140 miles to the southward of Lisbon, the ship Denia was strained as if she had struck on a rock; the seams of the deck opened, and the compass was upset. On board another ship, 120 miles to the westward of Cape St. Vincent, the shock was so violent as to toss the men up perpendicularly from the deck. The great sea wave rose along the whole southern and western coasts of Portugal and Spain; and at Cadiz it is said to have risen to a height of sixty feet. At Tangier, on the northern coast of Africa, the tide rose and fell eighteen times in rapid succession. At Funchal in Madeira, where the usual ebb and flow of the tide is seven feet, it being half tide at the time, the great wave rolled in, and at once raised the level of the water fifteen feet above high water mark. This immense tide, rushing into the city, caused great damage, and several other parts of the island were similarly flooded. The tide was also suddenly raised on the southern coast of Ireland; the
CHAPTER XXVIII.
JAPAN AND ITS DISASTROUS EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES
BY TRUMBULL WHITE
The Island Empire Subject to Convulsions of Nature – Legends of Ancient Disturbances – Famous Volcano of Fuji-yama Formed in One Night – More Than One Hundred Volcanoes in Japan – Two Hundred and Thirty-two Eruptions Recorded – Devastation of Thriving Towns and Busy Cities – The Capital a Sufferer – Scenes of Desolation after the Most Recent Great Earthquakes.
JAPAN may be considered the home of the volcano and the earthquake. Few months pass there without one or more earth shocks of considerable force, besides numerous lighter ones of too slight a nature to be worthy of remark. Japanese histories furnish many records of these phenomena.
There is an ancient legend of a great earthquake in 286 B.C., when Mount Fuji rose from the bottom of the sea in a single night. This is the highest and most famous mountain of the country. It rises more than 12,000 feet above the water level, and is in shape like a cone; the crater is 500 feet deep. It is regarded by the natives as a sacred mountain, and large numbers of pilgrims make the ascent to the summit at the commencement of the summer. The apex is shaped somewhat like an eight-petaled lotus flower, and offers from three to five peaks to view from different directions. Though now apparently extinct, it was in former times an active volcano, and the histories of the country mention several very disastrous eruptions. Japanese poets never weary in celebrating the praises of Fuji-san, or Fuji-yama, as it is variously called, and its conical form is one of the most familiar in Japanese painting and decorative art.
As Japan has not yet been scientifically explored throughout, and, moreover, as there is considerable difficulty in defining the kind of mountain to be regarded as a volcano, it is impossible to give an absolute statement as to the number of volcanoes in the country. If under the term volcano be included all mountains which have been in a state of eruption within the historical period, those which have a true volcanic form, together with those that still exhibit on their flanks matter ejected from a crater, we may conclude that there are at least 100 such mountains in the Japanese empire. Of this number about forty-eight are still active.
Altogether about 232 eruptions have been recorded, and of these the greater number took place in the southern districts. This may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that Japanese civilization advanced from the south. In consequence of this, records were made of various phenomena in the south when the northern regions were still unknown and unexplored.
The most famous of the active volcanoes is Asama-yama in Shinano. The earliest eruption of this mountain of which record now exists seems to have been in 1650. After that it was only feebly active for 133 years, when there occurred a very severe eruption in 1783. Even as late as 1870 there was a considerable emission of volcanic matter, at which time also violent shocks of earthquake were felt at Yokohama. The crater is very deep, with irregular rocky walls of a sulphur character, from apertures in which fumes are constantly sent forth.
Probably the earliest authentic instance of an earthquake in Japan is that which is said to have occurred in 416 A.D., when the imperial palace at Kioto was thrown to the ground. Again, in 599, the buildings throughout the province of Yamato were all destroyed, and special prayers were ordered to be offered up to the deity of earthquakes. In 679 a tremendous shock caused many fissures to open in the provinces of Chikuzen and Chikugo, in Kiushiu; the largest of these chasms was over four miles in length and about twenty feet in width. In 829 the northern province of Dewa was visited in a similar manner; the castle of Akita was overthrown, deep rifts were formed in the ground in every direction, and the Akita river was dried up.
To descend to more recent instances, in 1702 the lofty walls of the outside and inside moats of the castle of Yeddo were destroyed, tidal waves broke along the coast in the vicinity, and the road leading through the famous pass of Hakone, in the hills to the east of Fuji-yama was closed up by the alteration in the surface of the earth. A period of unusual activity was between the years 1780 and 1800, a time when there was great activity elsewhere on the globe. It was during this period that Mount Unsen was blown up, and from 27,000 to 53,000 persons (according to different accounts) perished; that many islands were formed in the Satsuma sea; that Sakura-jima threw out so much pumice material that it was possible to walk a distance of twenty-three miles upon the floating debris in the sea; and that Asama ejected so many blocks of stone – one of which is said to have been forty-two feet in diameter – and a lava-stream sixty-eight kilometres in length.
In 1854 an earthquake destroyed the town of Shimoda, in the province of Idzu, and a Russian frigate, lying in the harbor at the time, was so severely damaged by the waves caused by the shock that she had to be abandoned. In 1855 came a great earthquake which was felt most severely at Yedo, though its destructive power extended for some distance to the west along the line of the Tokaido. It is stated that on this occasion there were in all 14,241 dwelling houses and 1,649 fire proof store houses overturned in the city, and a destructive fire which raged at the same time further increased the loss of life and property.
What was possibly the gravest disaster of its class in this land of volcanoes, since the terrible eruptions which came in the twenty years ending in 1800, occurred in the Bandai-san region in northern Japan, on July 15, 1888. At about eight o’clock in the morning of that day, almost in the twinkling of an eye, Little Bandai-san was blown into the air, and wiped out of the map of Japan. A few moments later its debris had buried or devastated the surrounding country for miles, and a dozen or more of upland hamlets had been overwhelmed in the earthen deluge, or wrecked by other phenomena attending the outburst. Several hundreds of people had met with sudden and terrible death; scores of others had been injured; and the long roll of disaster included the destruction of horses and cattle, damming up of rivers, and laying waste of large tracts of rice-land and mulberry groves.
A small party was organized in Tokio to visit the scene. As the travelers approached the mountain, they were told that twenty miles in a straight line from Bandai-san no noise or earthquake was experienced on the 15th, but mist and gloom prevailed for about seven hours, the result of a shower of impalpable blue-gray ash, which fell to a depth of half an inch, and greatly puzzled the inhabitants. An ascent of about 3,000 feet was made to the back of the newly formed crater, so as to obtain a clear view of it and of the country which had been overwhelmed. Only on nearing the end of the ascent was the party again brought face to face with signs of the explosion. Here, besides the rain of fine, gray, ashen mud which had fallen on and still covered the ground and all vegetation, they came upon a number of freshly opened pits, evidently in some way the work of the volcano. Ascending the last steep rise to the ridge behind Little Bandai-san, signs of the great disaster grew in number and intensity.
The London Times correspondent, who was one of the party, wrote: “Fetid vapors swept over us, emanating from evil looking pools. Great trees, torn up by their roots, lay all around; and the whole face of the mountain wore the look of having been withered by some fierce and baleful blast. A few minutes further and we had gained the crest of the narrow ridge, and now, for the first time, looked forth upon the sight we had come to see. I hardly know which to pronounce the more astonishing, the prospect that now opened before our eyes or the suddenness with which it burst upon us. To the former no more fitting phrase, perhaps, can be applied than that of absolute, unredeemed desolation – so intense, so sad, and so bewildering that I despair of describing it adequately in detail.
“On our right, a little above us, rose the in-curved rear wall of what, eight days before, had been Sho-Bandai-san, a ragged, almost sheer cliff, falling, with scarce a break, to a depth of fully 600 feet. In front of the cliff everything had been blown away and scattered over the face of the country before it, in a roughly fan-shaped deposit of for the most part unknown depth – deep enough, however, to erase every landmark, and conceal every feature of the deluged area. At the foot of the cliff, clouds of suffocating steam rose ceaselessly and angrily, and with loud roaring, from two great fissures in the crater bed, and now and then assailed us with their hellish odor. To our eyes, the base, denuded by the explosion, seemed to cover a space of between three and four square miles. This, however, can only be rough conjecture. Equally vague must be all present attempts to determine the volume of the disrupted matter. Yet, if we assume, as a very moderate calculation, that the mean depth of the debris covering a buried area of thirty square miles is not less than fifteen feet, we find that the work achieved by this great mine of Nature’s firing was the upheaval and wide distribution of no fewer than 700,000,000 tons of earth, rocks, and other ponderous material. The real figure is probably very much greater.”
The desolation beyond the crater, and the mighty mass thrown out by the volcano which covered the earth, were almost incredible. “Down the slopes of Bandai-san, across the valley of the Nagase-gawa, choking up the river, and stretching beyond it to the foothills, five or six miles away, swept a vast, billowy sheet of ash-covered earth or mud, obliterating every foot of the erstwhile smiling landscape. Here and there the eyes rested on huge, disordered heaps of rocky debris, in the distance resembling nothing so much as the giant, concrete, black substructure of some modern breakwater. It was curious to see on the farther side the sharp line of demarkation between the brown sea of mud and the green forests on which it had encroached; or, again, the lakes formed in every tributary glen of the Nagase-gawa by the massive dams so suddenly raised against the passage of their stream waters. One lake was conspicuous among the rest. It was there that the Nagase-gawa itself had been arrested at its issue from a narrow pass by a monster barrier of disrupted matter thrown right across its course. Neither living thing nor any sign of life could be discerned over the whole expanse. All was dismally silent and solitary. Beneath it, however, lay half a score of hamlets, and hundreds of corpses of men, women and children, who had been overtaken by swift and painful deaths.”
Although the little village of Nagasaka was comparatively uninjured, nearly all its able-bodied inhabitants lost their lives in a manner which shows the extraordinary speed with which the mud-stream flowed. When Little Bandai-san blew up, and hot ashes and sand began to fall, the young and strong fled panic-stricken across the fields, making for the opposite hills by paths well known to all. A minute later came a thick darkness, as of midnight. Blinded by this, and dazed by the falling debris and other horrors of the scene, their steps, probably also their senses, failed them. And before the light returned every soul was caught by a swift bore of soft mud, which, rushing down the valley bed, overwhelmed them in a fate more horrible and not less sudden than that of Pharaoh and his host. None escaped save those who stayed at home – mostly the old and very young.
A terrible earthquake convulsed central Japan on the morning of October 25, 1891. The waves of disturbance traversed thirty-one provinces, over which the earth’s crust was violently shaken for ten minutes together, while slighter shocks were felt for a distance of 400 miles to the north, and traveled under the sea a like distance, making themselves felt in a neighboring island. In Tokio itself, though 170 miles from the center of disturbance, it produced an earthquake greater than any felt for nearly forty years, lasting twelve minutes. Owing, however, to the character of the movement, which was a comparatively slow oscillation, the damage was confined to the wrecking of some roofs and chimneys. Very different were its results in the central zone of agitation, concerning which a correspondent wrote as follows:
“There was a noise as of underground artillery, a shake, a second shake, and in less than thirty seconds the Nagoya-Gifu plain, covering an area of 1,200 square miles, became a sea of waves, more than 40,000 houses fell, and thousands of people lost their lives. The sequence of events was approximately as follows: To commence at Tokio, the capital, which is some 200 miles from the scene of the disaster, on October 25th, very early in the morning, the inhabitants were alarmed by a long, easy swaying of the ground, and many sought refuge outside their doors. There were no shocks, but the ground moved back and forth, swung round, and rose and fell with the easy, gentle motion of a raft upon an ocean swell. Many became dizzy, and some were seized with nausea.”
These indications, together with the movements of the seismographs, denoted a disturbance at a considerable distance, but the first surmise that it was located under the Pacific Ocean, was unfortunately incorrect. The scene of the catastrophe was indicated only by tidings from its outskirts, as all direct news was cut off by the interruption of railway and telegraphic communication. An exploratory and relief party started on the second day from Tokio, not knowing how far they would be able to proceed by train, and the correspondent who accompanied them thus described his experiences:
“Leaving Tokio by a night train, early next morning we were at Hamamatsu, 137 miles distant from Tokio, on the outside edge of the destructive area. Here, although the motion had been sufficiently severe to destroy some small warehouses, to displace the posts supporting the heavy roof of a temple, and to ruffle a few tiles along the eaves of the houses, nothing serious had occurred. At one point, owing to the lateral spreading of an embankment, there had been a slight sinkage of the line, and we had to proceed with caution. Crossing the entrance to the beautiful lake of Hamana Ko, which tradition says was joined to the sea by the breaking of a sand-spit by the sea waves accompanying an earthquake in 1498, we rose from the rice fields and passed over a country of hill and rock. Further along the line signs of violent movement became more numerous. Huge stone lanterns at the entrances of temples had been rotated or overturned, roofs had lost their tiles, especially along the ridge, sinkages in the line became numerous, and although there was yet another rock barrier between us and the plain of great destruction, it was evident that we were in an area where earth movements had been violent.”
The theatre of maximum destruction was a plain, dotted with villages and homesteads, supporting, under the garden-like culture of Japan, 500 and 800 inhabitants to the square mile, and containing two cities, Nagoya and Gifu, with populations respectively of 162,000 and 30,000, giving probably a round total of half a million human beings. Within about twelve miles of Gifu, a subsidence on a vast scale took place, engulfing a whole range of hills, while over lesser areas the soil in many places slipped down, carrying with it dwellings and their inmates. Gifu was a total wreck, devastated by ruin and conflagration, causing the destruction of half its houses. Ogaki, nine miles to the west, fared even worse, for here only 113 out of 4,434 houses remained standing, and one-tenth of the population were killed or wounded. In one temple, where service was being held, only two out of the entire congregation escaped.
Nagoya, too, suffered heavily, and thousands of houses collapsed. The damage at this place was produced by three violent shocks in quick succession, preceded by a deep, booming sound. During the succeeding 206 hours, 6,600 earth spasms of greater or less intensity were felt at increasing intervals, occurring in the beginning probably at the rate of one a minute. The inhabitants were driven to bivouac in rude shelters in the streets, and there was great suffering among the injured, to whom it was impossible to give proper care for many days after the disaster. Some estimates placed the figure of the killed and wounded as high as 24,000, whilst not less than 300,000 were rendered homeless.
Owing to the frequency of earthquake shocks in Japan, the study of their causes and effects has had a great deal of attention there since the introduction of modern science into the island empire. The Japanese have proved as energetic in this direction as they are in purely material progress on the lines of western civilization, and already they are recognized as the most advanced of all people in their study of seismology and its accompanying phenomena.
CHAPTER XXIX.
KRAKATOA, THE GREATEST OF VOLCANIC EXPLOSIONS
BY TRUMBULL WHITE
The Volcano That Blew Its Own Head Off – The Terrific Crash Heard Three Thousand Miles – Atmospheric Waves Travel Seven Times Around the Earth – A Pillar of Dust Seventeen Miles High – Islands of the Malay Archipelago Blotted Out of Existence – Native Villages Annihilated – Other Disastrous Upheavals in the East Indies.
ONE of the fairest regions of the world is the Malay Archipelago of the East Indies. Here nature is prodigal with her gifts to man, and the cocoa-palm, cinnamon and other trees flourish, and rice, cotton, the sugar cane and tobacco yield their increase under cultivation. But beneath these scenes of loveliness, there are terrific energies, for this region is a focus of intense volcanic action. In the Sunda strait, between Sumatra and Java, there lies a group of small volcanic islands, the largest of which is Krakatoa. It forms part of the “basal wreck” of a large submarine volcano, whose visible edges are also represented by Velaten and Lang islands.
For two hundred years the igneous forces beneath Krakatoa remained dormant; but in September, 1880, premonitory shocks of earthquake were heard in the neighborhood. At length the inhabitants of Batavia and Bintenzorg were startled on May 20, 1883, by booming sounds which came from Krakatoa, one hundred miles distant. A mail steamer passing through the strait, had her compass violently agitated. Next day a sprinkling of ashes was noticed at some places on each side of the strait, and toward evening a steam-column rising from Krakatoa revealed the locality of the disturbance. The commander of the German war ship Elisabeth, while passing, estimated the dust-column to be about thirty-six thousand feet, or seven miles high.
Volcanic phenomena being common to that region, no fears were entertained by the inhabitants in the vicinity; and an excursion party even started from Batavia to visit the scene of action. They reached the island on May 27th, and saw that the cone of Perborwatan was active, and that a column of vapor arose from it to a height of not less than ten thousand feet, while lumps of pumice were shot up to about six hundred feet. Explosions occurred at intervals of from five to ten minutes, each of these outbursts uncovering the liquid lava in the vent, the glow of which lighted up the overhanging steam-cloud for a few seconds.
Shortly after this visit the activity diminished. But on June 19th it was noticed at Anjer that the height of the dust and vapor-column, and likewise the explosions were again increasing. On the 24th a second column was seen rising. At length, Captain Ferzenaar, chief of the Topographical Survey of Bantam, visited Krakatoa island on August 11th. He found its forests destroyed, and the mantle of dust near the shores was twenty inches thick. Three large vapor-columns were noted, one marking the position of the crater of Perborwatan, while the other two were in the center of the island, and of the latter, one was probably Danan. There were also no less than eleven other eruptive foci, from which issued smaller steam-columns and dust. This was the last report prior to the great paroxysm.
During the next two or three weeks there was a decline in the energy of the volcano, but on the afternoon of Sunday, August 26th, and all through the following night, it was evident that the period of moderate eruptive action had passed, and that Krakatoa had now entered upon the paroxysmal stage. From sunset on Sunday till midnight the tremendous detonations followed each other so quickly that a continuous roar may be said to have issued from the island. The full terrors of the eruption were now approaching. The distance of ninety-six miles from Krakatoa was not sufficient to permit sleep to the inhabitants of Batavia. All night volcanic thunders sounded like the discharges of artillery at their very doors. On the next morning there were four mighty explosions. The third was of appalling violence, and it gave rise to the most far-reaching effects. The entire series of grand phenomena at that spot extended over a little more than thirty-six hours.
Captain Thompson, of the Media, then seventy-six miles northeast of Krakatoa, saw a black mass like smoke rising into the clouds to an altitude estimated at not less than seventeen miles. The eruption was also viewed by Captain Wooldridge at a distance of forty miles. He speaks of the vapory mass looking like “an immense wall, with bursts of forked lightning, at times like large serpents rushing through the air.” After sunset this dark wall resembled “a blood-red curtain with the edges of all shades of yellow, the whole of a murky tinge, with fierce flashes of lightning.” Two other masters of vessels, at about the same distance from the volcano, report seeing the mastheads and yardarms of their ships aglow with electric fire. Such effects seem to be easily explicable. When we consider how enormous must be the friction going on in the hot air, through the clash against each other of myriads of particles of volcanic dust, during ejection and in their descent, it is evident that such friction is adequate to produce a widespread electrical disturbance in the surrounding atmosphere. The rush of steam through craters or other fissures would also contribute to these disturbances.
From these causes the compasses of passing ships were much disturbed. And yet the fall of magnetic oxide of iron (magnetite), a constituent of volcanic ash, possibly had some share in creating these perturbations. On the telephone line from Ishore, which included a submarine cable about a mile long, reports like pistol shots were heard. At Singapore, five hundred miles from Krakatoa, it was noted at the Oriental Telephone Company’s station that, on putting the receiver to the ear, a roar like that of a waterfall was heard. So great was the mass of vapor and dust in the air, that profound darkness, which lasted many hours, extended even to one hundred and fifty miles from the focus of the eruption. There is the record, among others, that it was “pitch dark” at Anjer at two o’clock in the afternoon of the 26th.
So great, too, was the ejective force that the fine volcanic dust was blown up to a height of fifty thousand feet, or over nine miles, into space. Another estimate gives the enormous altitude of seventeen miles to which the dust had been blown. The volcanic ash, which fell upon the neighboring islands within a circle of nine and one half miles radius, was from sixty-five to one hundred and thirty feet thick. At the back of the island the thickness of the ash beds was from one hundred and ninety-five to two hundred and sixty feet. Masses of floating pumice encumbered the strait. The coarser particles of this ash fell over a known area equal to 285,170 square miles, a space equal to the whole of the New England States, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. It is calculated that the matter so ejected must have been considerably over a cubic mile in volume.
Another distinguishing feature of this display of nature’s powers was the magnitude and range of the explosive sounds. Lloyd’s agent at Batavia, ninety-four miles distant from Krakatoa, reported that on the morning of the 27th the reports and concussions were simply deafening. At Carimon, Java, which is three hundred and fifty-five miles distant, the natives heard reports which led them to suppose that a distant ship was in distress; boats put off for what proved to be a futile search. The explosions were heard not only all over the province of Macassar, nine hundred and sixty-nine miles from the scene of the eruption, but over a yet wider area. At a spot one thousand one hundred and sixteen miles distant – St. Lucia bay, Borneo – some natives heard the awful sound. It stirred their consciences, for, being guilty of murder, they fled, fearing that such sounds signified the approach of an avenging force. Again, in the island of Timor, one thousand three hundred and fifty-one miles away, the people were so alarmed that the government sent off a steamer to seek the cause of the disturbance.
At that time, also, the shepherds on the Victoria plains, West Australia, thought they heard the firing of heavy artillery, at a spot one thousand seven hundred miles distant. At midnight, August 26th, the people of Daly Waters, South Australia, were aroused by what they thought was the blasting of a rock, a sound which lasted a few minutes. “The time and other circumstances show that here again was Krakatoa heard, this time at the enormous distance of two thousand and twenty-three miles.” And yet there is trustworthy evidence that the sounds were heard over even greater distances. Thundering noises were heard at Diego Garcia, in the Chagos islands, two thousand two hundred and sixty-seven miles from Krakatoa. It was imagined that some vessel must be in distress, and search was accordingly made. But most remarkable of all, Mr. James Wallis, chief of police in Rodriguez, across the Indian ocean, and nearly three thousand miles away from Krakatoa, made a statement in which he said that “several times during the night of August 26th-27th reports were heard coming from the eastward like the distant roar of heavy guns. These reports continued at intervals of between three and four hours.” Obviously, some time was needed for the sounds to make such a journey. On the basis of the known rate of velocity, they must have been heard at Rodriguez four hours after they started from their source.
And yet, great as was the range of such vibrations, they could not be compared with that of the air-wave caused by the mighty outburst. This atmospheric wave started from Krakatoa at two minutes past ten on that eventful Monday morning, moving onward in an ever-widening circle, like that produced when a stone is thrown into smooth water. This ring-like wave traveled on at the rate of from six hundred and seventy-four to seven hundred and twenty-six miles an hour, and went around the world four, if not even seven times, as evidenced by the following facts: Batavia is nearly a hundred miles from the eruptive focus under review. There was connected with its gas-holder the usual pressure recorder. About thirteen minutes after the great outburst, this gauge showed a barometric disturbance equal to about four-tenths of an inch of mercury, that is, an extra air pressure of about a fifth of a pound on every square inch. The effects on the air of minor paroxysmal outbreaks are also recorded by this instrument; but barometers in the most distant places record the same disturbance. The great wave passed and repassed over the globe and no inhabitant was conscious of the fact. Barometers in the principal cities of the world automatically recorded this effect of the first great wave from Krakatoa to its antipodes in Central America, and also the return wave. The first four oscillations left their mark on upward of forty barograms, the fifth and sixth on several, and at Kew, England, the existence of a seventh was certainly established.
