Geoscience Reference
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traveler could have relished an earthquake more than John Muir, whose
admiration for “wild” nature led him to found the Sierra Club in 1892.
Muir's day came in the Yosemite valley in 1872: “The shocks were so violent
and varied, and succeeded one another so closely, one had to balance in
walking as if on the deck of a ship among the waves, and it seemed impos-
sible the high cliffs should escape being shattered.” in the moment after the
first tremor Muir's senses were preternaturally alert. He heard a “stupendous
roaring rock-storm” followed by the “chafing, grating against one another,
groaning, and whispering” of the settling rocks. He smelled “the odor of
crushed Douglas Spruces, from a grove that had been mowed down and
mashed like weeds.” And he rode out the aftershocks, which “made the
cliffs and domes tremble like jelly.” When the ground stilled, Muir observed
the reactions of the valley's inhabitants: “i found the indians in the mid-
dle of the valley, terribly frightened, of course, fearing the angry spirits of
the rocks were trying to kill them. The few whites wintering in the valley
were assembled in front of the old Hutchings Hotel comparing notes and
meditating flight to steadier ground, seemingly as sorely frightened as the
indians. it is always interesting to see people in dead earnest, from whatever
cause, and earthquakes make everybody earnest.” Muir observed the terror
of his neighbors with detachment. He tried and failed to console two of his
companions, who “fled to the lowlands.” To Muir, they seemed to fail to
grasp the true meaning of the experience: “Storms of every sort, torrents,
earthquakes, cataclysms, 'convulsions of nature,' etc., however mysterious
and lawless at first sight they may seem, are only harmonious notes in the
song of creation, varied expressions of God's love.”
12
it was not only men who were drawn to seismic adventure. A
New York
Times
headline of 1872 announced “A Lady's earthquake experience.” What
followed was a letter from an American woman traveling in Peru, whose
brush with an earthquake had left her with “cold, clammy hands” and re-
ligious doubts; her husband “did not comprehend it.” “i wish Mrs. L could
experience one,” the writer commented, “as she is so anxious to do so. i
think one experience would satisfy her.”
13
The novelist Gertrude Atherton
offered similar advice in the wake of the San francisco earthquake of 1906:
“i can suggest no better 'cure' for those that live where nature has practically
forgotten them and civilization has become as great a vice as too much vir-
tue, in whom a narrow and prosperous life has bred pessimism and other
forms of degeneracy, stunting the intelligence as well as atrophying the
emotions, than to spend part of every year in earthquake country.”
14
Antici-
pation ran so high that some travelers could not hide their disappointment
when confronted with the real thing. Mrs. Campbell Dauncey, the wife of
