234 BOOK OF THE DAMNED 



of the Chinese tradition are found upon a beach, in Cornwall, after 

 an earthquake 



Phil. Trans., 50-500: 



After the quake of July 15, 1757, upon the sands of Penzance, 

 Cornwall, in an area of more than 100 square yards, were found 

 marks like hoof prints, except that they were not crescentic. We 

 feel a similarity, but note an arbitrary disregard of our own, this 

 time. It seems to us that marks described as "little cones sur- 

 rounded by basins of equal diameter" would be like hoof prints, if 

 hoofs printed complete circles. Other disregards are that there were 

 black specks on the tops of cones, as if something, perhaps gaseous, 

 had issued from them; that from one of these formations came a 

 gush of water as thick as a man's wrist. Of course the opening of 

 springs is common in earthquakes but we suspect, myself, that the 

 Negative Absolute is compelling us to put in this datum and its 

 disorders. 



There's another matter in which the Negative Absolute seems to 

 work against us. Though to super-chemistry, we have introduced 

 the principle of celestio-metathesis, we have no good data of ex- 

 change of substances during proximities. The data are all of falls 

 and not of upward translations. Of course upward impulses are 

 common during earthquakes, but I haven't a datum upon a tree or 

 a fish or a brick or a man that ever did go up and stay up and that 

 never did come down again. Our classic of the horse and barn 

 occurred in what was called a whirlwind. 



It is said that, in an earthquake in Calabria, paving stones shot 

 up far in the air. 



The writer doesn't specifically say that they came down again, but 

 something seems to tell me they did. 



The corpses of Riobamba. 



Humboldt reported that, in the quake of Riobamba, "bodies were 

 torn upward from graves"; that "the vertical motion was so strong 

 that bodies were tossed several hundred feet in the air." 



I explain. 



I explain that, if in the center of greatest violence of an earth- 

 quake, anything ever has gone up, and has kept on going up, the 

 thoughts of the nearest observers were very likely upon other 

 subjects. 



The quay of Lisbon. 



We are told that it went down. 



