When wL remember that had not the effects of the
earth-shock on the water been limited by the shores of South America,
a wave of disturbance equal in extent to that which travelled westward
would have swept toward the east, we see that the force of the shock
was sufficient to have disturbed the waters of an ocean covering the
whole surface of the earth. For the sea-waves which reached Yokohama
in one direction and Port Fairy in another had each traversed a
distance nearly equal to half the earth's circumference; so that if
the surface of the earth were all sea, waves setting out in opposite
directions from the centre of disturbance would have met each other at
the antipodes of their starting-point.
It is impossible to contemplate the effects which followed the great
earthquake--the passage of a sea-wave of enormous volume over fully
one third of the earth's surface, and the force with which, on the
farthermost limits of its range, the wave rolled in upon shores more
than ten thousand miles from its starting-place--without feeling that
those geologists are right who deny that the subterranean forces of
the earth are diminishing in intensity.
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