ts of the
plane, as well as the depth to which it attained, can be approximately
determined.

It is worth while to consider the extent to which earthquake shocks
may affect the general quality of the people who dwell in countries
where these disturbances occur with such frequency and violence as to
influence their lives. There can be no question that wherever
earthquakes occur in such a measure as to produce widespread terror,
where, recurring from time to time, they develop in men a sense of
abiding insecurity, they become potent agents of degradation. All the
best which men do in creating a civilization rests upon a sense of
confidence that their efforts may be accumulated from year to year,
and that even after death the work of each man may remain as a
heritage to his kind. It is likely, indeed, that in certain realms, as
in southern Italy, a part of the failure of the people to advance in
culture is due to their long experience of such calamities, and the
natural expectation that they will from time to time recur. In a
similar way the Spanish settlements in Central and South America,
which lie mostly in lands that are subject to disastrous shocks, may
have been retarded by the despair, as well as the loss of property
and life, which these accidents have so frequently inflicted upon
them. It will not do, however, to attribute too much to such
terrestrial influences. By far the most important element in
determining the destiny of a people is to be found in their native
quality, that which they owe to their ancestors of distant
generations. In this connection it is well to consider the history of
the Icelandic people, where a small folk has for a thousand years been
exposed to a range and severity of trials, such as earthquakes,
volcanic explosions, and dearth of harvests may produce, and all these
in a measure that few if any other countries experience.
Notwithstanding these misfortunes, the Icelanders have developed and
maintained a civilization which in all else, except its material
results, on the average transcends that which has been won by any
other folk in modern times. If a people have the determining spirit
which leads to high living, they can successfully face calamities far
greater than those which earthquakes inflict.

It was long supposed that the regions where earthquakes are not
noticeable by the unaided senses were exempt from all such
disturbances. The observations which seismologists have made in