Ch. XIX.] GREAT ERUPTION OF ST. VINCENT. 353 



several estates never recovered ; and so the 30th of 

 April dawned in darkness which might be felt. 



" Meanwhile, on the same day, to change the scene of 

 the campaign two hundred and ten leagues, ' a distance/ 

 as Humboldt says, ' equal to that between Vesuvius and 

 Paris,' the inhabitants, not only of Caraccas, but of 

 Calabozo, situate in the midst of the Llanos, over a space 

 of four thousand square leagues, were terrified by a sub- 

 terranean noise, which resembled frequent discharges of 

 the loudest cannon. It was accompanied by no shock, 

 and, what is very remarkable, was as loud on the coast 

 as at eighty leagues inland ; and at Caraccas, as well as 

 at Calabozo, preparations were made to put the place in 

 defence against an enemy who seemed to be advancing 

 with heavy artillery.' They might as well have copied 

 the St. Vincent herd boy, and thrown their stones, too, at 

 the Titans ; for the noise was, there can be no doubt, 

 nothing else than the final explosion in St. Vincent far 

 away. The same explosion was heard in Venezuela, the 

 same at Martinique and Guadaloupe ; but there, too, 

 there were no earthquake shocks. The volcanoes of the 

 two French islands lay quiet, and left their English 

 brother to do the work. On the same day, a stream of 

 lava rushed down from the mountain, reached tlia sea in 

 four hours, and then all was over. The earthquakes 

 which had shaken for two years a sheet of the earth's 

 surface larger than half Europe were stilled by the 

 eruption of this single vent. 



" The strangest fact about this eruption was, that the 

 mountain did not make use of its old crater. The ori- 

 ginal vent must have become so jammed and consolidated, 

 in the few years between 1785 and 1812, that it could 



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