ON ITS EXTERIOR. EARTHQUAKES. 173 



lowered to the level of the pavement without being 

 thrown down; the sinking down of massive houses, ( 243 ) 

 with such an absence of disruption or dislocation, that 

 the inhabitants could open the doors in the interior, pass 

 uninjured from room to room, light candles, and debate 

 with each other their chances of escape, during two days 

 which elapsed before they were dug out ; lastly the en- 

 tire disappearance of great masses of stones and building 

 materials. The old town had possessed churches, con- 

 vents, and houses of several stories, but in the places 

 where they had stood, we found, on tracing out among 

 the ruins the former plan of the city, only stone heaps, 

 of from eight to twelve feet high. In the south-western 

 part of old Eiobamba (in the former Barrio de Sigchu- 

 guaica), we could distinctly recognise the signs of an 

 explosion from beneath, the action of a force from 

 below upwards. On the cone called Cerro de la Culca, 

 which rises some hundred feet and appears above and 

 on the north side of the Cerro de Cumbicarca, rubbish 

 from the stone buildings lay mingled with the ske- 

 letons of men. Movements of translation in a hori- 

 zontal direction, whereby avenues of trees were re- 

 moved without being uprooted, or fields, bearing 

 different kinds of . cultivation, became intermixed, 

 showed themselves repeatedly, both in Quito and in 

 Calabria. A still more striking and complicated phse- 

 nomenon was the finding articles belonging to one house 

 among the ruins of others at a considerable distance 

 a discovery which gave rise to some lawsuits. Is it, as 

 the inhabitants of the country believe, that the earth 

 throws out again at one spot that which it has swallowed 

 up at another ? or, is it (notwithstanding the distance) 



