Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 126, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 May 1912 — WHEN MUIR REJOICED [ARTICLE]

WHEN MUIR REJOICED

NATURALIST WRITEB ABOUT A “NOBLE EARTHQUAKE." Impressive Description of Bhocks In Yosemite Valley Which Gave Birth to a Now Mountain Avalanche Talus While He Looked. "A noble earthquake! A noble earthquakeJ” exclaimed John Muir, when he was awakened at half-past; two o’clock of a moonlit morning ini tip Yosemite valley. Por years he bad believed that the many great avalanche taluses leaning against the walls of the valley at Intervals of mile or two, had been caused by an. ‘ earthquake at least three centuries before, and here was his chance torn ake some observations. Never be- . fore had he enjoyed a storm of this sort, but the strange, thrilling motionj could not be mistaken, and so he rani out of his cabin, both glad and frightened as he made his exclamation. “The shocks were so violent and varied, and succeeded on another so closely,” he writes in the Century, "that I had to balance myself carefully In walking, as If on the deck of a ship among waves, and it seemed impossible that the high- cliffs of the; valley could escape being shattered. In particular I feared that the sheerfronted Sentinel rock, towering above my cabin, would be shaken down, and I took shelter back, of a large yellow pine, hoping that It might protect me from at least the smaller outbonndlng boulders.” V The most impressive part of his description Is of the sounds. "It was a calm, moonlight night,” he says, "and ho sound was heard for the first minute or so save low, muffled, bubbling underground rumblings, and the whispering and rustling of the agitated trees, as if Nature were holding her breath. Then suddenly out of the strange silence and strange motion there came a tremendous roar. The Eagle rock, on the south wall about half a mile up the valley, gave way, and I saw it falling in'thousands of the great boulders I had so long been studying, pouring to the valley floor in a free curve luminous from friction, making a terribly sublime spectacle—an arc of glowing, passionate fire, fifteen hundred feet span, as true in form and as serene in beauty as a rainbow in the midst of the stupendous rock storm. The sound wgs so tremendously deep and broad and earnest that the whole earth, like a living creature, seemed at laat to have found voice, and to he calling to her sister planets. In trying to tell something of the size of this awful sound, it seems to me that if all the thunder of all the storms I had ever heard were condensed into one roar, it would not equal the rock roar at .the birth of a mountain talus. Think, then, of the roar that arose to heaven at the simultaneous birth of the ancient canyon taluses throughout the length and breadth of the range!” The Indians and many of the white men left the valley in terror of this earthquake, the final rumblings of which were not over for two months, but Muir remained to study Its effects. Among other things, he kept a bucket of water on his cabin table to learn what he could of the movements.