212 COSMOS. 



attended by any subterranean noise.* This impression is not 

 in my opinion the result of a recollection of those fearful 

 pictures of devastation presented to our imaginations by the 

 historical narratives of the past, but is rather due to the 

 sudden revelation of the delusive nature of the inherent faith 

 by which we had clung to a belief in the immobility of the 

 .solid parts of the Earth. We are accustomed from early 

 childhood to draw a contrast between the mobility of water and 

 the immobility of the soil on which we tread ; and this feeling 

 is confirmed by the evidence of our senses. When, therefore, 

 we suddenly feel the ground move beneath us, a mysterious 

 and natural force with which we are previously unacquainted 

 is revealed to us as an active disturbance of stability. A 

 moment destroys the illusion of a whole life our deceptive 

 faith in the repose of nature vanishes, and we feel transported 

 as ,it were into a realm of unknown destructive forces. Every 

 sound the faintest motion in the air arrests our attention, 

 and we no longer trust the ground on which we stand. Ani- 

 mals, especially dogs and swine, participate in the same 

 anxious disquietude ; and even the crocodiles of the Orinoco, 

 which are at other times as dumb as our little lizards, leave 

 the trembling bed of the river and run with loud cries into 

 the adjacent forests. 



To man the earthquake conveys an idea of some universal 

 and unlimited danger. We may flee from the crater of a 

 volcano in active eruption, or from the dwelling whose destruc- 

 tion is threatened bv the approach of the lava stream ; but in 

 an earthquake, direct our flight whithersoever we will, we still 



* [Dr. Tschudi, in his interesting work, Travels in Peru, translated 

 from the German by Thomasina Ross, p. 170, 1847, describes strikingly 

 the effect of an earthquake upon, the native and upon the stranger. 

 "No familiarity with the phenomenon can blunt this feeling. The 

 inhabitant of Lima, who from childhood has frequently witnessed these 

 convulsions of nature, is roused from his sleep by the shock, and rushes 

 from his apartment with the cry of Misericordia ! The foreigner from 

 the north of Europe, who knows nothing of earthquakes but by descrip- 

 tion, waits with impatience to feel the movement of the earth, and longs 

 to hear with his own ear the subterranean sounds which he has hitherto 

 considered fabulous. With levity he treats the apprehension of a com- 

 ing convulsion, and laughs at the fears of the natives ; but as soon as his 

 wish is gratified, he is terror-stricken, and is involuntarily prompted to 

 '*eek safety in flight."] Tr. 



