EARTHQUAKES. 211 



the sea roue to an elevation of sixty-four feet, while in the An- 

 tilles, where the tide usually rises only from twenty-six to 

 twenty-eight inches, it suddenly rose above twenty feet, the 

 water being of an inky blackness. It has been computed that 

 on the 1st of November, 1755, a portion of the Earth's sur- 

 face, four times greater than that of Europe, was simultane- 

 ously shaken. As yet there is no manifestation offeree known 

 to us. including even the murderous inventions of our own 

 race, by which a greater number of people have been killed in 

 the short space of a few minutes : sixty thousand were de- 

 stroyed in Sicily in 1693, from thirty to forty thousand in the 

 earthquake of Riobamba in 1797, and probably five times as 

 many in Asia Minor and Syria, under Tiberius and Justinian 

 the elder, about the years 19 and 526. 



There are instances in which the earth has been shaken for 

 many successive days in the chain of the Andes in South 

 America, but I am only acquainted with the following cases 

 in which shocks that have been felt almost every hour for 

 months together have occurred far from any volcano, as, for 

 instance, on the eastern declivity of the Alpine chain of Mount 

 Cenis, at Fenestrelles and Pignerol, from April, 1808 ; be- 

 tween New Madrid and Little Prairie,* north of Cincinnati, 

 in the United States of America, in December, 1811, as well 

 as through the whole winter of 1812 ; and in the Pachalik of 

 Aleppo, in the months of August and September, 1822. As 

 the mass of the people are seldom able to rise to general views, 

 and are consequently always disposed to ascribe great phe- 

 nomena to local telluric and atmospheric processes, wherever 

 the shaking of the earth is continued for a long time, fears of 

 the eruption of a new volcano are awakened. In some few 

 cases, this apprehension has certainly proved to be well ground- 

 ed, as, for instance, in the sudden elevation of volcanic islands, 

 and as we see in the elevation of the volcano of Jorullo, a 

 mountain elevated 1684 feet above the ancient level of the 

 neighboring plain, on the 29th of September, 1759, after ninety 

 days of earthquake and subterranean thunder. 



If we could obtain information regarding the daily condi- 

 tion of all the earth's surface, we should probably discover that 

 the earth is almost always undergoing shocks at some point 

 of its superficies, and is continually influenced by the reaction 



* Drake, Nat. and Statist. View of Cincinnati, p. 232-238 ; Mitchell, 

 in the Transaction* of the Lit. and Philos. Soc. of New York, vol. i.. p. 

 231-308. In the I'iedmoute&e county of Pignerol, glasses of water, filled 

 tu the very brim. inhibited for hours a continuous motion. 



