EARTHQUAKES. 207 



greater number of people have been killed in the short space 

 of a few minutes : sixty thousand were destroyed in Sicily in 

 1G93, from thirty to forty thousand in the earthquake of Rio- 

 bamba 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 ; 

 between 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 

 phenomena 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 grounded, 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 neighbouring plain, on the 29th of September, 

 1759, after ninety days of earthquake and subterranean 

 thunder. 



If w r e could obtain information regarding the daily condition 

 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 

 of the interior on the exterior. The frequency and general 

 prevalence of a phenomenon which is probably dependent on 

 the raised temperature of the deepest molten strata explain 



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

 Mitchell, in the Transactions of the Lit. and Philos. Soc. of New 

 York, vol. i. pp. 281-308. In the Piedmontese county of Pignerol, 

 glasses of water fiDed to the very brim, exhibited for hours a continuous 

 motion. 



