The Earth's Shifting Crust by Charles Hapgood - wire of information

CONTINENTS AND OCEAN BASINS 143
and Mt. Geraneia, at, respectively, 1,400 feet, 1,500 feet,
and 1,700 feet above sea level. He found a beach on Mt.
Delos at 500 feet (3243:616-17). William H. Hobbs cited
a particularly interesting case of a beach of recent date now
1,500 feet above sea level, in California:
Upon the coast of Southern California may be found all the features
of wave-cut shores now in perfect preservation, and in some
cases as much as fifteen hundred feet above the level of the sea.
These features are monuments to the grandest of earthquake dis-
turbances which in recent times have visited the region (216:249).
It would be possible to multiply endlessly the evidence of the
raised beaches, which are found in every part of the world.
Many of them may imply changes in the elevations of the sea
bottoms, such as are suggested by Umbgrove.
One of the most remarkable features of the earth's surface
is the Great Rift Valley of Africa. The late Dr. Hans Cloos
pointed out that the high escarpment along one side of this
valley was once, quite evidently, the very edge of the African
continent: not just the beginning of the continental shelf,
but the very edge of the continental mass. In some vast movement
that side of the continent was tremendously uplifted,
and the sea bottom was uplifted with it as much as a mile,
and became dry land. This is so interesting a matter, and of
such special importance for our theory, that I quote Dr.
Cloos at length:
There are two rims to the African continent. Twice the funda-
mental problem arises: why do the continents of the earth end so
sea? . . . Even more
abruptly and plunge so steeply into the deep
raised and thickened
astounding, what is the meaning of the high,
mountain margins that most continents have? (85:68).
. , . The short cross-section through the long Lebombo Chain
looks unpretentious, but it illuminates events far from this remote
plot of the earth. For here the old margin of the continent is exposed.
Not so long ago, during the Cretaceous Period, the sea ex-
tended to here from the east. The flatland between the Lebombo hills
and the present coast is uplifted sea-bottom. . . . What we see are
the flanks of a downward bend of High Africa toward the Indian
Ocean. . . .