Читать книгу The Evacuation of England: The Twist in the Gulf Stream онлайн

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“I am thus brought to consider that world-wide source of terrestrial deformation—earthquakes; but I should forget the indulgence of your patience up to this point, if I should now undertake any partial review of these astonishing and alarming occurrences. I am deeply impressed, however, with an aspect of the subject that demands attention, that throws into sharp relief the prophecies of disaster, with which, willingly or unwillingly, we have all become familiar.”

The lecturer here rolled forward to the front of the platform, a blackboard on which in colored chalks the earth, looking somewhat like a shortened egg, with its north and south poles situated on the long, flattened sides, was depicted; while a black line or axis drawn through it terminated in the Sahara Desert on one side, and near the Society Islands on the other. Two ominous circles in vermillion were described on it, concentric respectively with the ends of the black line, one sweeping along the western coast of North and South America, and crossing the Isthmus of Panama, the other encircling the coasts of Africa and gathering in their fatal course the Azores, Canaries, and the Cape Verde Islands. And on both these terrifying curves, in black letters, was printed the hypnotic intimation “Belt of Weakness or Earthquake Ring.” The effect on the audience was sufficiently impressive. The staring rude drawing around which a cyclone of blue scratches, purporting to be clouds, was expressively raging, intensely steeped the observers in a spell of wonder and trepidation. Even Leacraft, by the contagion of a common obsession, craned his neck, and fixed his eyes with a stupid absorption upon the crazy and paradoxical diagram.