ABOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 39 



disappeared, and not a vestige of them ever appeared 

 again. Where that quay stood, was afterwards found a 

 depth of 100 fathoms (600 feet) water. It happened to 

 be a religious festival, and most of the population were 

 assembled in the churches, which fell and crushed them. 

 That no horror might be wanting, fires broke out in 

 innumerable houses where the wood-work had fallen on 

 the fires and much that the earthquake had spared was 

 destroyed by fire. And then too broke forth that worst 

 of all scourges, a lawless ruffian-like mob, who plundered, 

 burned, and murdered in the midst of all that desolation 

 and horror. The huge wave I have spoken of swept the 

 whole coast of Spain and Portugal. Its swell and fall 

 was ten or twelve feet at Madeira. It swept quite 

 across the Atlantic, and broke on the shores of the West 

 Indies. Every lake and firth in England and Scotland 

 was dashed for a moment out of its bed, the water not 

 partaking of the sudden shove given to the land, just as 

 when you splash a flat saucerful of water, the water 

 dashes over on the side from which the shock is given. 



(49.) One of the most curious incidents in this earth- 

 quake was its effect on ships far out at sea, which would 

 lead us to suppose that the immediate impulse was in 

 the nature of a violent blow or thrust upwards, under the 

 bed of the ocean. Thus it is recorded that this upward 

 shock was so sudden and violent on a ship, at that time 

 forty leagues from Cape St Vincent, that the sailors on 

 deck were tossed up into the air to a height of eighteen 

 inches. So also, on another occasion in 1796, a British 

 ship eleven miles from land near the Philippine Islands 



