THE WORLD. 



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higft, overflowed a part of the city of Cadiz; and the lake of Ge- 

 neva was observed to be in commotion six hours after the shock; 

 agitations were also noticed on lake Ontario. Such is the great 

 extent of country influenced by these terrible convulsions when 

 exhibited in their most destructive form, but the changes which 

 are silently being accomplished, the gradual elevations and sub- 

 sidences of the land are no less remarkable. Previously to noti- 

 cing these however, we will allude for a mon^nt to similar phe- 

 nomena but accomplished suddenly. In the year 1772, during 

 an eruption of one of the loftiest mountains in the island of Java, 

 a part of the island, and of the volcano, embracing a tract of 

 country fifteen miles long, and six miles broad, was swallowed 

 up, and in 1775, during the eruption which destroyed Lisbon, a 

 new quay, upon which thousands of the affrighted inhabitants 

 had congregated, suddenly disappeared, and not one of their bod- 

 ies ever rose to the surface. In 1692, a tract of land a thousand 

 acres in extent, in the island of Jamacia, sank down in less than 

 a minute, and the sea took its ^pce. On the 16th of June 1816, 

 a violent earthquake happened at Cutch, in Bombay, which so 

 much altered the eastern channel of the Indus, that from having- 

 been easily fordable, it was deepened to more than eighteen feet 

 at low water, and the channel of the river Runn which had some- 

 times before been almost dry, was no longer fordable except at 

 one place; and at the same time the mud village and fort of 

 Sindree, belonging to the Cutch government, and situated where 

 the Runn joins the Indus, was submerged, leaving only the tops of 

 the houses above the water. But the subsidence of land caused 

 by earthquakes is not more remarkable than the elevation, and 

 many examples might be given of the upraising of land. Perhaps 

 the most remarkable was during the terrible earthquake in No- 

 vember 1822, which agitated the western coast of South Ameri- 

 ca in the vicinity of Chili, for a distance of twelve hundred miles 

 from north to south. On examining the district around Valpa- 

 raiso the morning after the shock, it was found that the entire 

 coast for upwards ofone hundred miles was raised above its for- 

 mer level, thus leaving dry the bed of the sea. The area of the 

 surface upraised, and which extended from the sea coast to the 



