Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
all be of equal value and equal credibility, since illusions and preconceived
ideas enter very easily, apart from unintentional inaccuracies, which likewise
slip in and the source of which can sometimes lie in careless observation
and sometimes in inadequate description.”
66
The traveler should therefore
assume that earthquake observers would offer “frivolous opinions” and
“incomplete descriptions.” The residents of earthquake-prone lands were
especially suspect, since (contra Humboldt) “fear of earthquakes tends to
grow with the number of shocks experienced.” When the second edition of
the German handbook appeared a decade later, the situation of seismology
and of German travelers abroad had changed again. The 1875 edition of the
German manual had been inspired by the far-flung expeditions to observe
the transit of venus of 1874. The edition of 1888 was devoted instead to
the “colonizing ambitions of Germany.” in the interim, seismology had
become—according to the editor—an autonomous discipline, relying heav-
ily on instruments and on expert knowledge of local geology. The trav-
eler could contribute little to such studies. Only in “populous and civilized
lands” could seismological research be undertaken. The editor judged that
in the first edition, the chapter on earthquakes had “far exceeded the limits
of an 'introduction for travelers,'” and in the new version earthquakes were
relegated to a small section of the chapter on geology.
67
Similarly, the 1886
edition of Richthofen's
Guide for Scientific Travelers
dispensed entirely with
instructions for earthquake observation.
68
if, by the turn of the century, sci-
entists were no longer recruiting european travelers abroad as seismological
researchers, this was in part because they believed they had found a replace-
ment: the instrumental registration of distant tremors.
Earthquake-Watching on Samoa
Samoan legends collected by europeans in the nineteenth century told of
Mafuïé, the god of volcanoes and earthquakes. Mafuïé had broken an arm
in a fight with a young warrior, leaving him only one arm with which to
shake the earth. A British missionary recounted this story at the second
meeting of the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science in
1890 and drew a geohistorical lesson: “The testimony of the old natives is
that the shocks of earthquakes were much more severe in olden times.”
69
Other Samoan myths invoked the god Tangaloa, who cast his fishing line
into the sea and pulled up an island. in fact, it is not implausible that strong
earthquakes produced uplift of this sort.
70
Many such legends were collected
during the last two decades of the nineteenth century, as British and Ger-
man colonists began to settle on Samoa. The testimony of Samoans helped
