SALUBRITY. 137 



San Juan Capistrano, and there was nobody in the church 

 when it fell. At the same time the sea receded a long distance 

 from the ordinary place of the water's edge, on the beach of 

 Santa Barbara ; and the people there, knowing that it would 

 soon rush upon the shore, fled to the higher ground, and by 

 that means alone saved their lives. 



The old Mission Church at Santa Clara was thrown down 

 by an earthquake in 1818. 



On the 15th of May, 1851, a severe shock was felt in San 

 Francisco. Windows were broken ; merchandise was thrown 

 down from shelves in stores ; and vessels in the harbor rolled 

 heavily. 



A severe shock of an earthquake was felt at Fort Yuma and 

 vicinity on the 29th of November, 1852. The low grounds 

 near the Colorado cracked open with long, wide fissures, from 

 which water, sand, and mud, spouted up. The fissures were 

 in some places so large, that they turned the river from its 

 course ; and the change was so sudden, that great multitudes 

 of fish were left to die in the mud. At the same time, the 

 mud-volcanoes of Lower California, distant forty-five miles 

 south west ward from Fort Yuma, resumed their activity ; for, 

 although there is no record of their previous action, yet they 

 probably existed before. A pool of hot, sulphurous water had 

 been observed at the place by Americans since 1849. Imme- 

 diately after the shock of 1852, the officers at Fort Yuma saw 

 a great body of steam shoot up at least one thousand feet in 

 the desert to the southwest ; and when, soon afterward, some 

 of them went out to examine into the cause of it, they found 

 the mud-volcanoes on the site of the old pool, throwing up 

 steam, boiling water, and mud, very much like the salses far- 

 ther north. 



On the 10th of July, 1855, an earthquake cracked the walls 

 of twenty-six houses in Los Angeles ; but no wall was thrown 

 down, nor was any person injured. 



The earthquake of January 9th, 1857, shook the earth from 

 Fort Yuma to Sacramento, a distance of five hundred miles, 



