On EarthquaJtes,^ 19-£ 



rolled along the coast of Spain, and at Tangier in Africa, rose and fell eigiiteeii' 

 times upon the shore. At Funchal,.in Maderia, it rose fifteen feet ; and at 

 Kinsale, in Ireland, a body of water suddenly entered the harbour and 

 whirled round, and otherwise disturbed the vessels. The waters of Loch 

 Lomond, in Scotland, without any apparent cause, rose several feet above 

 their usual level. Ships at sea were violently shaken. On one, the concus- 

 sion was so violent tliat the sailors were jerked suddenly upwards to the 

 height of a foot and a half from the deck. This latter statement appears 

 ' scarcely credible, and' yet Humboldt mentions one still more extraordinary.. 

 He states that " in the overthrow of the town of Eiobamba in 1797, the 

 bodies of many of the inhabitants were found to have been hurled to Cullca,. 

 a hill several hundred feet in height, and on the opposite side of the river 

 Lican." * There surely must be some exaggeration, in this instance. How 

 could the inhabitants have been: hurled up into the air unless the town were 

 also shot up along with them 1 



" In the year 1692 the Island- of Jariiaica was visited by a violent 

 earthquake ; the ground swelled and heaved like a rolling sea, and was 

 traversed by numerous cracks, two or three hundred of which were ofteii' 

 «een at a time opening and then, closing rapidly again. Many people were- 

 swallowed up in these rents ; some, the earth caught by the middle ancJ 

 squeezed to death, the heada of others only appeared above ground, and some 

 were first engulphed and then east up again with great quantities of water. 

 Such was the devastation, that even at Port Royal, then the capital, where 

 more houses are said to have been left standing than in the whole island: 

 beside, three quarters of the buildings, together with the ground they stood, 

 on sank down with their inhabitants entirely under water. 



" The large store-houses on the harbour side subsided so as to be twenty- 

 four, thirty-six, and forty-eight feet under water : yet many of them appear 

 to have remained' standing, for it is stated that after the earthquake, the mast 

 beads of several ships wrecked in the- harbour, together with the chimney 

 tops of houses were seen projecting above the waves. A tract of land round 

 the town, about a thousand acres in extent, sank down in^ less than ono* 

 minute during the first shock, and the sea immediately rolled in. The Swan^ 

 frigate which was repairing in the wharf was driven over the tops of many 

 of the buildings and then thrown upon one Oi the roofs, through which it 

 broke. The breadth of one of the streeta is said to have been doubled by 

 the earthquake." * 



Hundreds of earthquakes have- taken place, and have been recorded withM 

 the historic period, and during which all the principal phenomena were the 

 same as in the two above mentioned. The surface of the earth in each was 

 shaken over a greater or less extent and the sea agitated and heaped up into- 

 waves, rolled out upon the land. The phenomena of subterranean sounds do 

 not always accompany these terrific convulsions^ The great shock at 



* See Huroboldt's Cosmos, rol, I, page 199, Bohn'a edition. 



* Lyelli's Prineipl«s of Geology, 8th editioB; page 486, 



