Great Earthquake 267 
deposited over the country around. The vast quantity of 
material thrown out by this explosion may be gathered from 
the fact that, one hundred and twenty miles away, near the 
volcano of San Miguel, the dust was so thick that it was quite 
dark from four o’clock in the evening until nearly noon of 
the next day; and even at that distance there was deposited 
a layer of fine ashes four inches deep. The noise of the 
explosion was heard at the city of Guatemala, four hundred 
miles to the westward, and at Jamaica, eight hundred miles 
to the north-east. 
In St. Vincent, in the West Indies, there was a great 
eruption on April 27th, 1812, which continued for three days, 
and was heard six hundred and thirty miles away on the Ilanos 
of Caracas, It has been so graphically narrated by Canon 
Kingsley that I shall once more quote from his eloquent 
pages. ‘‘ That single explosion relieved an interior pressure 
upon the crust of the earth which had agitated sea and land 
from the Azores to the West Indian Islands, the coasts of 
Venezuela, the Cordillera of New Granada, and the valleys 
of the Mississippi and Ohio. For nearly two years the earth- 
quakes had continued, when they culminated in one great 
tragedy, which should be read at length in the pages of 
Humboldt. On March 26th, 1812, when the people of 
Caracas were assembled in the churches, beneath a still and 
blazing sky, one minute of earthquake sufficed to bury, amid 
the ruins of the churches and houses, nearly ten thousand souls. 
The same earthquake wrought terrible destruction along the 
whole line of the northern Cordilleras, and was felt even at 
Santa Fé de Bogota and Honda, one hundred and eighty 
leagues from Caracas. But the end was not yet. While 
the wretched survivors of Caracas were dying of fever and 
starvation, and wandering inland to escape from ever- 
renewed earthquake shocks, among villages and farms which, 
ruined like their own city, could give them no shelter, the 
almost forgotten volcano of St. Vincent was muttering in 
suppressed wrath. It had thrown out no lava since 1718, 
if, at least, the eruption spoken of by Moreau de Jonnés took 
place in the Souffriére. According to him, with a terrific 
earthquake, clouds of ashes were driven into the air, with 
violent detonations from a mountain situated at the eastern 
end of the island. When the eruption had ceased, it was 
