the crowd.

CHAPTER XVIII.

DISASTER AS VIEWED BY SCIENTISTS.

=Scientists are Divided Upon the Theories Concerning the
Shock That Wrought Havoc in the Golden Gate City--May
Have Originated Miles Under the Ocean--Growth of the
Sierra Madre Mountains May Have Been the Cause.=

The subterranean movement that caused the earthquake at San Francisco
was felt in greater or less degree at many distant places on the
earth's surface. The scientists in the government bureaus at
Washington believe that the subterranean land slide may have taken
place in the earthquake belt in the South American region or under the
bed of the Pacific Ocean. San Francisco got the result of the wave as
it struck the continent, and almost simultaneously the instruments in
Washington reported a decided tremor of the earth, and the
oscillations of the needle continued until about noon.

At the weather bureau the needle was taken from the pivot and had to
be replaced before the record could be continued. Other government
stations throughout the country also noted the earthquake shock, and
they agree in a general way that the disturbance began according to
the record of the seismograph at nineteen minutes and twenty seconds
after 8 o'clock. This would be the same number of minutes and seconds
after 5 o'clock at San Francisco, which accords entirely with the time
of the disaster on the Pacific Coast.

There seems to be no reason to believe the earthquake shock in San
Francisco had any direct connection with the eruption of Vesuvius.
That eruption had been recorded from day to day on the delicate
instruments established by the weather bureau at the lofty station on
Mount Weather, high up in the Virginia hills. This eruption of
Vesuvius did not disturb the seismograph even at the period of great
activity, but apparently Vesuvius and Mount Weather were like the
lofty poles of two wireless telegraph stations, and between them there
passed electrical magnetic waves encircling the earth. The records
made at Mount Weather were of the most distinct character, but they
showed disturbances in the air of a magnetic type and did not indicate
any earthquake.

In explaining the San Francisco trembling, C. W. Hays, the director of
geology in the geological survey, explained that earthquakes are,
according to modern scientific theory, caused by subterranean land
slides, the result of a readjustment as between the solid and the
molten part