Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/305

Rh roads, trees and fences was the same in kind. The rift passed through the corral, and one of the astonished cows dropped into it, soon falling deeply till only rump and tail were visible. The hysterical dogs barked at her, the water came into the rift, and the dairymen, doubtless with a sense of the impotence to struggle against fate, buried her in the grave from which they could not rescue her.

Crossing the valley the rift split a small hill, throwing down four large spruce trees, all of which fell at right angles to the crack. A very large oak tree standing on level ground was shoved violently, still standing, sixteen and one half feet to the southward into the base of the riven hill, or perhaps the western half of the hill was shoved violently about the tree. Dr. G. K. Gilbert seems to think it probable that both sides partook in the motion.

On through the valley of Olema went the rift, past more dairies, but leaving their buildings altogether to the east. Crossing the road above Bolinas, the two sides of the highway are rudely separated. Reaching Bolinas Bay, the rift is visible in the mud at low tide, and good authority reports the sea-bottom to the westward, along Duxbury Beef, to be raised two or three feet. The gatherers of abalone shells venture out into regions of sea-bottom formerly inaccessible at the lowest tides. On the east side of Bolinas Bay the clams are hopelessly buried. At Bolinas the pretty Flagstaff Inn was thrown into the sea and completely wrecked. The crack again enters the sea, passing across the entrance to the Golden Gate five or six miles west of the center of San Francisco, and giving to that breezy and joyous town a jolt which will live in history, but from which the fine-spirited people will recover long before the world at large will clearly understand what their experiences have really been. The rift reached the shore again at Mussel Bock to the southwest of San Francisco. Here the cliff was hurled down, a gradual incline was made a steep one and four thousand feet of newly graded railroad was thrown into the sea. It passed up the narrow valley of San Andreas, not harming the reservoir, but wrecking all the water mains entering San Francisco from the great reservoirs, Crystal Springs, San Andreas and Pilarcitos. The dam of the Crystal Springs reservoir, across the fault line, was so well built that the visible crack passed around it along the bank by its side, returning afterwards to its former direction. The bleak and boulderstrewn saddle called Cañada del Raymundo, scarred by previous earthquakes, was then passed, and beyond it the narrow, fertile valley, Portolá, named for the first governor of California, the discoverer of San Francisco Bay. The crack runs along the base of the Sierra Morena, four to five miles west of Stanford University, to the head of Portolá reservoir; then ascends in a cañon to a saddle on the summit, connecting two parallel ranges, Monte Bello to the east and