The Charleston earthquake was felt as a tremor of more or less force
through a wide area, embracing 900,000 square miles, and affecting
nearly the whole country east of the Mississippi. It is said that the
yield of the Pennsylvania natural gas wells decreased, and that a geyser
in the Yellowstone valley burst into action after four years of rest.
The movement of the earth-wave was in general north and south, deflected
to east and west, and the snake-like fashion in which rails on the
railroad were bent indicated both a vertical and a lateral force.
This earthquake has been attributed to various causes, but geological
experts think that it was due to a slip in the crust along the
Appalachian Mountain chain. There is a line of weakness along the
eastern slope of this chain, characterized by fissures and faults, and
it was thought that a strain had been gradually brought to bear upon
this through the removal of earth from the land by rains and rivers and
its deposition in thick strata on the sea-bottom. It is supposed that
this variation in weight in time caused a yielding of the strata and a
slip seaward of the great coastal plain. Professor Mendenhall, however,
thinks it was due to a readjustment of the earth's crust to its
gradually sinking nucleus.
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Volcano and the Earthquake, Earth's Demons of Destruction.
To most of us, dwellers upon the face of the earth, this terrestrial
sphere is quite a comfortable place of residence.
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