Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
ferent shades of watercolor. in principle, regions would vary in shade ac-
cording to both the relative frequency and intensity of past earthquakes. in
very few cases was Mallet able to determine the area of shaking according
to historical accounts; otherwise, he made his best guess, based on “the
physical, geological or other conditions of each area, known to modify the
distant propagation of shock.”
49
Sparsely populated areas, even regions of
europe like the Carpathian Mountains, were likely to be more seismically
active than the map could indicate. As Josiah Whitney soon pointed out,
Mallet improbably depicted the eastern half of the United States as more
seismically active than its western half! Mallet's confidence reflected the dis-
tortions of an imperial lens, but his catalog served seismology well. Mallet
judged that he had completed once and for all the task of a global historical
earthquake catalog, and in 1927 Charles Davison agreed with him: “Mallet
may have erred in regarding his catalogue as having no forerunners. There
can be little doubt, however, that it is the last that will ever be published
on so extensive a scale.”
50
in fact, the catalogs of Mallet and Perrey remain a
standard reference for historical seismologists today.
Mapping the Primitive Mind
Who knows how much that is strange and bizarre in Japanese art and life may be
due to the constant appalling effect on the mind of these mysterious phenomena
of nature?
51
—
Times
(London), 1885
victorian assumptions about the environmental determinants of civiliza-
tion and barbarism sat uncomfortably with scientists' experiences on the
ground in the colonial world. Seismology's engagement with native testi-
mony and folklore in Asia and Latin America raised provocative questions
about the relationship between science and myth. Among the products of
the long seismological career of Count fernand Jean Baptiste Marie Bernard
de Montessus de Ballore (1851-1923) was the posthumously published
Seismic and Volcanic Ethnography
. Montessus was a captain in the french
army, trained at the elite École Polytechnique, and a member of the mis-
sionary Society of Saint vincent de Paul. in 1881 he led a mission to el Sal-
vador, which looked to france as a model for its military. Montessus was to
provide artillery training to native troops; he played an active role four years
later in el Salvador's war with Guatemala. in the meantime, he developed
a fascination with the country's violent earthquakes and volcanoes, which
