190 0)1 Earthquakes, 



People in the fields did not notice anything unusual, except the sound. The 

 atmosphere was perfectly undisturbed, and a gentleman who was walking 

 across a field informed us that he felt no shaking of the earth, but heard 

 what he supposed to have been two distant peals of thunder in quick succet-v 

 sion, and which appeared to roll away towards the South. Papers published 

 in the towns at the distance of twenty-five and fifty miles make no mention 

 of this convulsion, and therefore while we are satisfied that it was an 

 earthquake we think it was confined to a comparatively small extent of the^ 

 earth's surface. 



The cause of earthquakes is not known. There are many ingenious 

 theories to account for the shaking of the earth, but none of them appear to 

 be suflBcient. Man is well and painfully acquainted with those terrific 

 convulsions, but the cause which generates them appears to be situated deep 

 down in the interior of the planet where its nature and the mode of its working 

 can never be observed by him. We know that all motion is produced by the 

 action of one or more masses of matter, whether animated or inanimated upon 

 one or more other masses, and in general we can see not only the mass which, 

 moves, but also that which moves it. In an earthquake we can feel and some- 

 times see the ground beneath our feet in motion, but that which causes it to 

 move we cannot see. It presents one of those problems, wherein the principal 

 and most important facts are concealed from view. Were we possessed of the 

 power of observing through the earth, no doubt the operations going on rn 

 the interior, would soon disclose the cause of many of the external unexplained 

 phenomena, but as man does not possess that power, all reasoning upon the 

 rubject must, at least in the present state of our knowledge be, at best 

 merely conjectural. During earthquakes the ground is violently shaken by 

 quick vibrations, either upwards or sideways, or by a compound motion of 

 goch a character, that objects lying loose upon the surface are whirled round. 

 The earth opens and swallows up cities — mountains are shaken and rent, and 

 their fragments thrown down upon the plain, while the sea, as if frightened 

 jfrom its bed, rolls up over the land and washes away the ruins into i^ 

 depths. At Lisbon, in 1755, a loud bellowing sound like thunder washeard 

 underground, and in an instant afterwards the city was dashed to pieces, and 

 sixty thousand persons killed. A great crowd of the survivors fled for safety 

 to the quay, but that also gave way. It sank suddenly and totally disap- 

 peared, occasioning as it went down a tremendous whirlpool in the waters, 

 which drew down a great number of boats and small vessels anchored near, 

 full of people. Not one of the bodies, neither did any fragments of the. 

 wrecks ever rise again to the surface. The sea first retired, and then rolled 

 hack upon the shore to the height of fifty feet above its ordinary level, 

 seizing upon and drowning hundreds of those who had escaped the earthquake 

 and were flying about in despair, not knowing whither to go. The efiects of 

 this earthquake were felt over an area of the earth's surface four times greater 

 than all Europe. It was noticed among the Alps, on the coast of Sweden, 

 in the flat country of Germany, in the West Indies, in Africa, and it is also 

 e^id slightly in Canada. A great wave, in some places sixty feet in height, 



