THE LECTURE.
Note.--If the reader is too much interested in getting to
the upshot of this tale, let him skip the Lecture. But it
is a mistake. This Lecture was delivered by Mr. Binn on the
Ninth of April, 1909, and is well worth while.
“Mr. President, Dr. Smith and Ladies and Gentlemen,” began the speaker;
“The area of the Panama Isthmus and the West Indies has been an area
of successional changes very considerable in their amount, very
persistent in their frequency. It embraces a tropical area contiguous
on its Pacific side to a meridional section of the earth which is very
unstable, and which almost monopolizes the contemporaneous volcanic
energy of the earth. It adjoins, or is limited itself on the east, in
the Atlantic, by the Antillean islets, the emergent crests of submerged
volcanic vents. It could be presumptively held, on these grounds, that
the Isthmus itself partook of these characters of inequilibrated
crustal motions. It might be affirmed, with a fair amount of precision,
that its future history would continue this impression.
“The West Indies, as defined by Hill, embracing the islands that with
Cuba form a long convexity terminating in Trinidad, on the coast of S.
America, represent to-day a disintegrated continent. They are supposed
to have embodied a former geographical unity. It had terrestrial
magnitude, and lay Atlantis-like between South America and North
America, at a time when the present narrow neck of land upon which our
eyes are now, as a nation, fixed with anxious preoccupation, was itself
swept over by the confluent waters of the two oceans, and when at that
point which now forms an attenuated avenue of intercourse between North
and South America, the tides of a broad water way alternated in their
allegiance to the East or West coasts of the separated continents; and
possibly a precarious and fluctuating contribution from the warm Gulf
Stream found its way into the Pacific.
“The discussion of this question opens up for our consideration the
examination of the geological structure of these oscillating terranes,
as to what these are made up of, and it is evident that we must reach
some general conclusion as to the succession of the strata composing
them, and their relative positions to each other, as whether they are,
in the language of stratigraphy, conformable or unconformable. The
inference and argument are simple. If we find that the rocks composing
these sections are crystalline, ancient, and deeply bedded formations,
presumably coexistent, so to speak, with the original or very early
formative beds of the world, and referable to its beginnings, we are
permitted, by all the analogies of induction and deduction, to assume
that these rocks have at least a relative stability. On the other hand
if our examination reveals the fact that they are recent deposits, more
or less unconsolidated, easily disturbed in their positions, easily
readjusted in their molecular or physical structure, then by the most
unexceptional and matter-of-fact observation, we shall regard them as
questionably permanent, indeed as unmistakably non-resistant to the
subterranean forces of terrestrial mutation.
“Again it is clear that a pile of bricks, or of any other superimposed
building blocks is the more secure, in its equilibrium, if the
component parts overlie each other, along the broadest surfaces, and
come in contact, or _fit_, as we say, in parallel position. If these
bricks succeed each other in lines of brick that are flat, and then
in lines that are vertical, or placed on their thinnest and narrowest
edges, and these two contrasted positions alternate, or are irregularly
disposed with reference to each other in the same wall, such a
construction implies, involves, elements of weakness, and under the
shock of any incident force would succumb in ruin more quickly, and
more irretrievably than the former. If further, the latter building
style had suffered ruptures and dislocations and the gaps or openings
and broken surfaces of contact between its parts had been invaded
or replaced by an irregular or incongruous assortment of ‘filling,’
differing from the original bricks in substance, texture and hardness,
then we have a third pattern of composition that again is weaker than
either of its predecessors. But further. If this least massive and
most vulnerable type of structure has been subjected to repeated and
considerable strains of elevation and depression, and strains recurrent
at short intervals, then, without inspection, we know that its interior
coherence has been much shattered, and that it has undergone a
progressive dilapidation.
“But I am constrained to go one step farther in this hypothetical
picture of structural defectiveness. To return to our wall of brick. It
can be made up of bricks laid upon each other in consecutive tiers; it
can be made up of tilted tiers of bricks, bricks laid on each other,
but inclined to a horizontal plane, and finally it is conceivable that
the bricks may be so arranged as to be inverted in their relations
to the horizontal plane. The diagrams make clear these contrasted
positions.
“Now of all these types of structures the last obviously best meets
the requirements of a type which will prove the least susceptible
to dislocation. I think that can be apprehended almost without
explanation. A moment’s reflexion will make it conspicuous.
“The bricks tilted up in inclined tiers or beds, upon disturbance, if
the cohesion between them is seriously impaired, tend to fall away
from each other, and gravity increases the effects of the initial
displacement. If the bricks lie flat they do not fall apart, upon the
cessation of any push or upheaval, but remain disordered, falling back
into some _quasi_-position of rest. If the bricks are inverted and form
in section a series of lines converging to the base of the wall, their
disarrangement is largely rectified by their own gravity, bringing them
back into their first positions.
“In Geology strata overlying each other, in succession, as the bricks
do when on their flat faces are called _conformable_, if they succeed,
one over the other, with the edges or summits of the lower, abutting
against the horizontal surfaces of the next, as do the bricks when they
are placed in flat and vertical positions, in alternating strips, that
is _unconformability_.
“If the strata are usually horizontal like the evenly piled series of
bricks, they are called _undisturbed_; if inclined against each other,
they are _inclined_, and they may make _monoclinals_, having one
slope, or _anti-clinals_ when they lean up against each other like the
opposite sides of a peaked roof; _or synclinal_ when inclined towards
each other in an inverted position like the same roof overturned, with
its ridge pole on the ground, and its inclined sides lifted into the
air, or like the bricks in the last pattern of structure described.
“When we carry these similes into nature, we have all kinds of rocks,
and we have them in mountains, in planes, and all the familiar
configuration of the earth’s surface.
“Now we find that those portions of the earth immediately beneath
our feet, extending for a mile or so into the surface of the earth,
are variously made up of layers, strata, beds, formations, lying on
one another, and _conformable_ or _unconformable_, _undisturbed_ or
thrown into anticlinal or synclinal folds; that the material in its
general mineral character, is limestone, marls, or sands and sandstone,
slates, clays, metamorphic rocks like gneiss and quartzite, etc., and
associated with them are granites which may have been melted lava-like
rock before it cooled and crystallized, while there is plentiful
evidence of abundant outflows of igneous, melted or viscid rocks;
evidences of lines of eruption, of foci, or craters of eruption. Thus,
as in the brick structure, where unrelated and later material has been
introduced in fissures, gaps, openings, holes, etc., of the walls,
we have some of the architecture of the earth, an original bedded
structure invaded by very contrasted substances, and which give to that
architecture, as in the brick wall of our homely illustration, lack of
homogeneity, and lack of strength.
“In the West Indies and on the Isthmus of Panama we have the states of
instability which we have signalized, viz., secondary deposits of a
somewhat loose and unconsolidated material, and wanting in the deeply
bedded crystalline rocks which in New England, in the Adirondacks, and
the Piedmont or higher regions abutting on the coastal plain in the
northern United States, furnish a solid, and probably fundamentally
deep seated pediment of resistance to shock. Again in the West Indies
and in the Isthmus, we have the beds _unconformable_ over each
other, which you will recall in our symbol of the brick wall, was a
feature of weakness; also these unconformable beds are inclined in
_anti-clinals_, a further aspect of structural insolvency; and further
these beds have been widely, pervasively, in places, infiltrated and
ruptured by subsequent introductions of volcanic substance, ashes,
lavas and intrusive magmas. Thus the geological aggregates present the
previously illustrated condition of fragility, and the absence of the
so-called tectonic elements of rigidity. But still one step more in our
disheartening study of this equatorial problem.
“I, a few moments past, called your attention to the fact that ‘if this
least massive and most vulnerable type of structure has been subjected
to repeated and considerable strains of elevation and depression, and
strains recurrent at short intervals, then, without inspection, we know
that its interior has been much shattered, and that it has undergone a
progressive dilapidation.’
“Precisely such catastrophes are discovered in the history of the
geological region now before us. The islands of the West Indies
have been subjected to great changes of elevation. They have risen
and fallen during the last geological age--the Tertiary--perhaps
four times. In their rise they have gathered to themselves marginal
extensions of land, now hidden beneath the ocean at comparatively
slight depths, while they have at the same time doubtless become
blended and unified into a great Antillean continent. This continent
was dominated by volcanic protuberances whose growth upward, over
accumulations of ashes, has been again symptomatic of undermining
operations threatening later subsidence and submergence.
“In our day we have been called on to deplore the ravages caused by the
eruptions of Mt. Pelee and La Soufriere, on the Islands of Martinique
and St. Vincent, and it is natural to insist that regions which have
a precarious autonomy, in which such volcanoes can exist, must be
regarded with diffidence, as permanent geographical areas.
“It was pointed out by Prof. Robert T. Hill that the current, and
formerly undisputed, conception that the Rocky Mountains of North
America and the Andes of South America were not only analogous
physiographically, but univalent in fact; that the continuous elevation
of Central America brought them into an oblique alignment; and that
their mutual prolongations met in the Isthmus of Panama, was erroneous.
It involved a complete misconception. It was a geographical fallacy,
and leads to misleading conclusions as to the permanency of this
intermedian region, itself pre-eminently individualized and liberated
from the circumstances and implications of either the Rocky Mountain
Continent or the Andean Continent. This area has a different geological
ancestry. To-day it invokes an especial treatment, and possibly expects
a future, contrasted with that of the two great Continents whose
longitudinal extension it contravenes by its east and west lines, by
the prerogatives of a separate origin.
“The Rocky Mountains terminate in the plateau of Mexico, ‘a little
south,’ says Hill, ‘of the capital of that republic; and that the
mountains have no orographic continuity, or other features in common
with those of the Central American region.’
“And the same authority, describing the terminus of the Andes,
says, ‘The northern end of the Andean System lies entirely east of
the Central American region, and is separated from it by the Rio
Atrato--the most western of the great Rivers of Columbia. In fact, the
deeply eroded drainage valley of this stream nearly severs the Pacific
coast from the republic of Columbia, and the isthmian region, from the
South American continent.’
“The Central American volcanoes belong to the type that is repeated
along the Caribbean shores of Colombia and Venezuela, and those in the
Isthmus of Panama, and those of the great Antilles. The genesis of this
American Mediterranean land-aggregate was in an independent geological
impulse, and the land aggregate itself impinged by intersection upon
the dominant land surfaces of North and South America. To bring
together North and South America as a simultaneous geological phenomena
is wrong, to make them other than an accidental geographical continuity
questionable. It is this intermediate zone--the Antillean continent
with lateral elongations, grasping within its continental solidarity
the parallel zones of Central America and the Isthmus, that gives them
terrestrial unity. Extend the axis of the Rocky Mountains, and it
passes almost two thousand miles west of the coast of South America;
extend the axis of the Andes and it bisects the western extremity of
Cuba, and passes along the seaboard of the United States.
“There is no exact geological identity here, although there is the
strictest geographical homology. Each is the backbone of a continent,
each upheaved and variously modified, igneously invaded sediments,
derived from some pre-existent continent. They may be brought into a
just comparison, but they are not strictly parts of one phenomenon.
They are, however, more closely related to each other, than the
Antillean areas are to either. This Antillean area, I shall here call
the Columbian Continent, as the great discoverer landed at its two east
and west extremities--the land-fall on San Salvador in the Bermudas,
and on the coast of Honduras in Central America, as well as at Cuba,
and at the mouths of the Orinoco--and his bones rested for a long
time in the soil of San Domingo. It--this Columbean Continent--is a
significant intercalation. It unites North and South America, but it
unites them subject to the phases of its own generation.
“Let us understand this. There is a system of growth, a law, if I may
so term it, of geomorphic sameness in the development of large, or
for that matter, small geological territories. The familiar story of
the growth of our North American continent has been often told. It is
a commonplace of text books. The wide, triangular Archæan nucleus to
the north, the oldest rocks--outlines and outliers down the east,
and the same in the west--drew the framing limits of the continent at
the first, to be filled in, up and out, by the momentous additions
through the ages of advancing time. In Europe less well or simply
defined boundaries, the growth together rather of divided islands,
prevailed, and the picture of development was quite varied, from the
picture in this western world. Again in Africa, with edges of uplift
and centres of depression another geological tale with its incidents
and accessories infinitely modified, comes into view. And in this
prevalence of structural style, we, geologically speaking, find a
prevalence of certain geological phases or conditions.
“What were these in the growth and disappearance of this Columbian
continent? What they have been, we can, with rational probability,
assume they will be.
“The Columbian continent, I have called a dismembered, a fractionized
continent. If from Cuba through Haiti, Porto Rico, and the lesser
Antilles one land surface obtained, and the now submerged and
radiating gorges, found only as submarine canyons, were above the
ocean, becoming, as Prof. Spencer has laboriously proven, sub-aerial
river valleys, we should have one presumable phase of this continent,
the phase of its maximum cohesion and extension. And such a phase is
measurably or, for purposes of argumentative inference, sensibly
established. It is said with careful premeditation by Hill that ‘the
numerous islets of its eastern border, the Bahamas and Windward chain,
which extend from Florida to the mouth of the Orinoco, are merely the
summits of steep submarine ridges, which divide the depths of the
Atlantic from those of the Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean sea; were
their waters a few feet lower, these ridges would completely landlock
the seas from the ocean.’
“When thus constituted, it afforded a display of physical features of
astonishing contrasts, and its mere scenic resources were doubtless of
unparalleled splendor, and, as to-day, it was involved in the luxuriant
productivity of the tropics. Its mountains measuring now as high as
eleven thousand feet above the sea level, were then thrust upward
into stupendous peaks, by the addition of the sloping miles which are
now below the ocean. We can imagine the extreme wonderfulness of this
continent, uniting in an unbroken but marvellously varied expression
of physical and vegetable contrast, the plains, valleys, and mountains
of Cuba, the towering and draped peaks of Jamaica, the confusion of
the gloomy vales and ranges of Hayti and San Domingo, the levels and
coastal ranges of Porto Rico, and the manifold picturesque charms
of the Lesser Antilles, lifting high into the ceaseless currents
of the trade winds the smoking summits of a chain of disturbed
volcanoes. All, in the boundless abundance of its natural endowment
of loveliness, and productivity, formed an unique and extravagantly
ornamented landscape, an area whose highest elevations contemplated
the remote waters of the shrunk Atlantic, from pinnacles raised ten
to twenty thousand feet above its azure waves. Nor is this all. This
hypothetical--the Columbian--continent, may have had connexions with
Central America through projecting and peninsulated capes, reaching
through Jamaica to Yucatan or Honduras, and wide intervals of dividing
gulfs of water, in all probability sundered it from North or South
America, and it remained, as I here emphatically insist, it remains
to-day, a geographical and geological phenomenon, unrelated to the
great continents, to which through their preponderating value, the mind
almost unpremeditatingly assigns it.
“But at the period of this greatest elevation, when this tropical
region assumed individual independence, and embodied a geognostic
importance comparable to the vast continents it lay between--at this
time--the Isthmus of Panama did not exist, and through a wide water-way
the Atlantic mingled its tides with those of the Pacific.
“We are thus led to believe that as between the West Indian terranes
and the neck of land now embraced in the Isthmus of Panama, we have a
relation of _Isostacy_.’”
The speaker, armed with this formidable verbal equipment of attack upon
his audience, had walked to the front of the platform, and, harboring
some unusual confidence in his powers, had deserted his manuscript.
_Isostacy_, he had realized, possessed probably unqualified novelty,
and by way of assurance, lest its terrors might empty the hall, he
assumed a colloquial relation to his dazed hearers, and offered an
explanation of this unexpected mystery. “Isostacy,” he resumed, “is
simply this: Equilibrium. It is the maintenance of average level--as
if one part of the earth’s surface was pushed up, above a mean level,
then the requirements of Isostacy would depress another part, below
it. We can also call it the adjustment of a changing load, as if
through depression, from the dumping upon the floor of the ocean of a
great amount of sediment, derived from the land surface of the earth,
neighboring areas of the land of the oceanic floors were raised. Two
contiguous regions _might_--and,” the lecturer turned directly toward
the President, who in his own earnestness of attention had elbowed
himself round into a direct line with Mr. Binn, “in the case of the
West Indian continent and the Isthmus of Panama, _have_ maintained
between them, an up and down reciprocity of movement, as, when one was
up, the other was down, and vice versa.”
Mr. Binn looked introspectively at the walls and ceilings of the room,
as if engaged in a mental rehearsal and review of his staggering
statement, and returned to his desk and manuscript, satisfied that
he had thrown the assembly into an uneasy apprehension of danger. He
again began his reading: “It is true, if I understand Mr. Spencer
correctly, that the Atlantic ocean was cut off by the elevation of the
Columbian Continent from even the interior basins of the Caribbean Sea
and the Gulf of Mexico, at least in early pliocene times; that these
depressions were then broad plains receiving in part the drainage of
the Antillean highlands; this again emptying into the Pacific ocean.
But this is not a proven theory, and it involves an extravagant
readjustment of the physical features of a region that to my mind more
expressively can be considered immemorially permanent, in their general
aspects, at least. I reiterate the reciprocity of movement between
the Antillean Continent and the Isthmus of Panama. The cause I have
suggested may be untenable--but there seems strong geological proof of
some such alternating relation between the west and east sides of this
inter-related region, the Great Antilles on one side, the Isthmus of
Central America on the other.
“Our survey of the question produces one impression, and that very
forcibly, viz.: that this narrow ridge of separation is ephemeral,
that it is perishable, that under the tests or against the shocks of
earth strains, it will succumb, and”--the lecturer raised his voice,
half turned deferentially to the chairman, Dr. Smith, who accepted the
attention with an assenting nod--“again the waters of the two oceans
will unite, and the impetuous violence of the rushing oceanic river,
the Gulf Stream, that now races and boils through the Caribbean Sea,
will fling its torrential waves across this divide into the Pacific.”
The audience that with manifest absorption had thus far followed the
speaker, was disturbed. A movement of chairs, a half audible protest of
whispered incredulity, and a sensible emanation around him, of mental
repugnance to such a catastrophe, made Leacraft momentarily turn his
eyes from Mr. Binn to the frowning countenances at his side.
“But,” the speaker raised his voice with reassuring quickness, as if
to stay the emotional resistance he had aroused, “we have no reason to
believe that in our lifetime, or the lifetimes of many generations yet
to come, so strange a reversal of present conditions should occur. And
again, that in this matter, we may be calmly judicial, we have reason
at least for a moderate fear. Whatever state of unstable equilibrium,
of unadjusted balance is implied, or actually is resident in this
section of our earth, a section that has undergone the extremes of
hypsometrical displacement, we may conceive that like the explosive
cap, or the compressed spring, or the bent bow, it will win instant
relief upon the impact of any force, deep-seated enough, and powerful
enough, to liberate its tectonic strain.
“I am thus brought to consider that world-wide source of terrestrial
deformation--earthquakes; but I should forget the indulgence of your
patience up to this point, if I should now undertake any partial review
of these astonishing and alarming occurrences. I am deeply impressed,
however, with an aspect of the subject that demands attention, that
throws into sharp relief the prophecies of disaster, with which,
willingly or unwillingly, we have all become familiar.”
The lecturer here rolled forward to the front of the platform, a
blackboard on which in colored chalks the earth, looking somewhat
like a shortened egg, with its north and south poles situated on the
long, flattened sides, was depicted; while a black line or axis drawn
through it terminated in the Sahara Desert on one side, and near the
Society Islands on the other. Two ominous circles in vermillion were
described on it, concentric respectively with the ends of the black
line, one sweeping along the western coast of North and South America,
and crossing the Isthmus of Panama, the other encircling the coasts
of Africa and gathering in their fatal course the Azores, Canaries,
and the Cape Verde Islands. And on both these terrifying curves, in
black letters, was printed the hypnotic intimation “Belt of Weakness
or Earthquake Ring.” The effect on the audience was sufficiently
impressive. The staring rude drawing around which a cyclone of blue
scratches, purporting to be clouds, was expressively raging, intensely
steeped the observers in a spell of wonder and trepidation. Even
Leacraft, by the contagion of a common obsession, craned his neck, and
fixed his eyes with a stupid absorption upon the crazy and paradoxical
diagram.
The speaker continued, noticing with undisguised satisfaction the
ocular concentration produced by his obnoxious figure, with its
anomalous portents: “It is well known that we have in the boundaries,
or shore lines of the Pacific, a surprisingly larger number of
earthquakes recorded, than anywhere else in the world, and this seems
in some way coincident with the prevalence of active volcanoes in the
same region. Prof. Haughton has enumerated for the world 407 volcanoes,
225 of which are active. Of these latter, 172 are on the margin of
the Pacific. Prof. Milne, who lived a long time in Japan, for the
express purpose of studying the earthquake problem of those islands,
has observed the surprising frequency of their earthquakes, and it
is a volcanic zone they occupy. We have in contradistinction to this
area about the Pacific a reversed circle which envelopes the western
coast of Africa, and by this chart,” here the lecturer pushed back
the blackboard, and, standing alongside of it, began, with a pointer
of elucidation, a direct allocution to that subject of confusion, “we
are made immediately cognizant of the opposite and yet symmetrical
disposition of these zones. This should have from its simplicity and a
quasi-permanency, in its phenomena--its earthquake phenomena--a general
explanation. The explanation is not reassuring; it is not proven, but
it is accepted by many, and has, for me, a very reasonable probability.
Let us at least not recoil from its consideration.”
Under the encouragement of this exhortation, the audience seemed to
slide forward in their seats a few inches, with the impetus of a
renewed hope.
“This chart,” said the speaker, “presents to you the structural
conception of Professors Jeans and Sollas, of the form of the earth.
It is the shape more or less familiar to you, commonly known as a
pear-shaped earth, the tip carrying the Sahara Desert on its bulging
top, and its broader and inferior extremity holding the disturbed
Pacific basin.
“Now it makes a very practical difference what the shape of the
earth is, because the shape affects the stability, has an important
influence upon the fluctuating strains under its surface. Observe that
the chart has developed, upon two circles of instability, these lines
of weakness,” and the lecturer swept his pointer over the contrasted
belts, one around Africa, and the other inflicting the west coast of
North America with its ominous intersection. The pointer paused on
the latter circle, stopping near the position of San Francisco. “You
recall,” the speaker continued, “the terrifying affliction of this
great city in 1906, and the pall of discouragement and gloom which
it cast over the region in which the city naturally held the sway of
mercantile supremacy. Now it was shown by Prof. H. H. Turner, the
English astronomer, that San Francisco lies on one of the two great
earthquake rings, which surround the end of the pear, as in this chart,
like wrinkles produced by the crowding down of the protuberances under
the force of gravitation. And, according to this view, such rings,
marking lines of weakness and yielding in the rocks would not exist,
if the earth was, in its shape, what we most usually assume to be its
figure, an oblate spheroid, with the present north and south poles at
the ends of its axis of rotation, to which axis of rotation the rest of
the earth was symmetrically disposed.
“The existence of these earthquake and volcanic rings was known before
the pear theory had been defined, but then of course their relation
with any peculiar form of the earth was not understood. The ring
surrounding the Pacific, or butt end of the pear includes a large part
of the shores of the Pacific Ocean, running from Alaska down to the
western coast of South America, then across to the East Indies, and
back, around the other side, through Japan. The other ring is somewhat
smaller in diameter, including the earthquake regions of West Africa
and the Atlantic Islands. Now the point of interest is this, as Garrett
P. Serviss has significantly said, ‘If the pear hypothesis is accepted,
and the two great earthquake rings are found to be definitely connected
with the strains to which the planet is subjected in its effort to
attain a state of equilibrium, under the forces of its own gravitation
and rotation, which tend to compel it into spheroidal shape, then we
have a perfectly rational explanation of the existence of certain
places where earthquakes are sure to occur more or less frequently, and
of other places, like eastern America, where they are very rare and
never of maximum violence.’
“Every one present this evening,” and the lecturer gave an embracing
wave of his hand, “knows of the singular aberrancy in the rotational
motion of the earth, which has been often geographically described
as the ‘wobbling of the poles.’ Astronomers have proven a real
tipping of the poles alternately to one side, and then to the other,
a swaying of the poles like the recurrent oscillations of a top as
it ‘goes to sleep.’ But this swaying in the earth’s case is periodic
and unchanging. It is sometimes rather abrupt, and at other times
the tipping is regulated and progressive; but it is established, and
has had a generally accepted explanation, in the attraction of the
swelling equatorial prominence of the earth by the sun and moon, while
suggestions have also been made that it was due to internal shiftings
of mass, or to changes of exterior weightings, through the alternate
and variable formation and melting of polar snows.
“But it has in the light of the present theory of the pear-shaped earth
a new and rather startling explanation.
“We are, however, this evening, not so much concerned with the broader
cosmic aspects of this state of affairs, as with the immediate
consequences to the permanence of our land surfaces.
“The mechanics of this condition and its possible effectiveness in
developing contrary placed zones of rupture can be easily conceived.
This awkwardly conditioned sphere, revolving upon a shorter
diameter--revolving also with astonishing velocity--and bearing at
either extremity of its longer axis unequal masses, is obviously in a
state of peripheral strain, that is, it is in strain at such distances
from either of the disproportioned ends, the one in the south seas,
the other in the desert of Sahara, as would represent the more or less
sharply sloping surface from its average rotundity, towards these
oblique extremities.
“Gentlemen,” the speaker seemed excitedly rushing into danger, but
with a fixed expression, aimed somewhere at the blank and uninfluential
physiognomies at the back of the hall; like that of an engineer who
can neither restrain nor reverse the speed which may either carry him
safely over a tottering support or plunge his train to the bottom of
the gulch; “Gentlemen, the Isthmus of Panama is in this zone; _the
Canal is there_!” this last reminder uttered with no very reasonable
deliberation, “and it is to my mind an absolutely established
certainty, that the secular instability of that region, shown by
geological investigation, will again become apparent; and”--he raised
his voice with a kind of exhalation of defiance, as if he spurned
equivocation and invited denial--“and, it will become apparent with
increased violence.
“This conclusion is unwelcome; it may seem destructive to those
natural hopes which the approaching completion of this wonderful
enterprise--the Panama Canal--have so freely and inevitably fostered.
Science in the last resource to her councils must be austerely
judicial. She cannot take cognizance of man’s projects or respect his
hopes. The Panama Canal as part of the Isthmus of Panama participates
in all the vicissitudes of the latter, and we know that those
vicissitudes mean dislocation and subsidence. When such frightful
results will happen, _it is impossible to say_; that they must happen,
_we can positively assert_.”
The lecture was over. The lecturer retreated, and again repeated his
deferential nod to the chairman, Dr. Smith, as if importuning his
assistance in corroboration of his mournful vaticination. The audience
still remained immobile, coagulated into a sort of mental prostration
by this dismal prophecy, and yet again as if contemplating, like a
cat’s stagnation, preparatory to its murderous spring, some outward and
physical resentment. And the spring came.
In the middle of the hall arose a tall and alert figure, perhaps
noticeably bent, as if from the effort of attention, or perchance from
forensic habits; for the man, as Dr. M-- quickly informed Leacraft, was
Senator Tillman, of South Carolina. The face of this sudden expostulant
was handsome in the extreme, and the features, strongly marked, were
blended together in an expression of youthfulness that seemed to win a
strange charm from their association with the white hair, and the just
beginning wrinkles of advancing years.
Senator Tillman lost no time. His interruption was decisively
intentional. It was part of an impulsive impassioned nature. Shaking
his index finger, which, from long practice, pointed undeviatingly
at the object of his remarks, the Senator, in a voice harsh and
penetrating, began: “My dear sir, we are indebted to you for
information. But we stop there. We are not required to credit you with
prediction. This scientific discussion will not alter our confidence
nor stop the work on the Canal. It can’t. I’m not inclined to think
that this nation will be stultified by the oracles of geology; it is a
matter of simple determination that science makes mistakes--and I would
advise no one in this room within the hearing of your voice, and no one
outside of it, to whose eyes your reported views will appear, to allow
them a scintilla of serious import.
“In 1906, Mark Smith, a voteless delegate to Congress from Arizona,
told this story: ‘Once,’ commented Smith, ‘a couple of my friends were
riding through a desolate bit of country in Arizona near the Mexican
border. Presently they came upon a man who was hanging by the neck from
the limb of a tree. A couple of buzzards were roosting above him, but
they made no attack upon him. My friends drove away the buzzards and
discovered on the breast of the dead man a placard bearing these words:
“_This was a very bad man in some respects and a damn sight worse in
others._“
“‘My friends accounted for the moderation of the buzzards on the theory
that they had read the placard.’
“That was all Smith had to say, but it was assumed that he agreed with
the opinion of the other men about the subject of their discussion.
Well, I beg to say of science that it is very bad in some respects,
and a damn sight worse in others, and its present conclusion in regard
to the Isthmus of Panama is one of the latter.”
The audience, long before this denoument to the Senator’s retort was
reached, had arisen; the President had arisen also, and stood with
his back to the stage, facing the Senator, steadily growing more
unrestrained and angry. Leacraft and Dr. M-- were half standing,
their hands supporting them on the backs of the chairs of the men
in front of them. The scene was interesting, and the first movement
toward repression of the Senator succumbed to curiosity, and in all
directions, the intelligent faces about them were variously disturbed
by symptoms of vexation or amusement. It was uncommonly entertaining.
Mr. Binn and Dr. Smith, with becoming smiles of moderation, were drawn
to the front of the platform, and no one, after the Senator had swung
into the torrential flow of his remonstrance, thought of anything else
but to catch, almost breathlessly, his words. When he concluded, a wave
of laughter, genuine, but a little nervous, went through the assembly.
Then the President stepped to the aisle, turned a moment to shake the
hand of the lecturer, and offer him his congratulations, and bowed to
Dr. Smith. In an instant the aisle way was clear. The President moved
on between the applauding people, and as he came opposite Senator
Tillman, who had himself pressed toward the egress, as if to intercept
him he stopped. There was a quick, instinctive restraint. Everyone
waited for his word. “Senator Tillman,” the President spoke with sharp
emphasis, “I thank you for restoring our spirits. I remember Mark
Smith. I remember he took my advice in accepting the Statehood Bill.
You may have misapplied his story, but you have at least furnished us
with a novel reason for encouragement.”
Again the applause broke out, and the President disappeared, the
audience decorously dispersed and followed him, and Leacraft and Dr.
M-- soon found themselves on Pennsylvania avenue, walking rapidly and
silently.