VOL. XV 1 1 1.] VHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 631 



pearance, showing what havoc has been there made. There one may see 

 where the tops of great mountains have fallen, sweeping down all the trees, 

 and every thing in their way, and making a path quite from top to bottom ; and 

 other places which seem to be peeled and bare a mile together; which vast 

 pieces ef mountains, with all the trees thereon, falling together in a huddled 

 and confused manner, stopped up most of the rivers for about 24 hours; which 

 afterwards having found out new passages, brought down into the sea, and this 

 harbour, several hundred thousand tons of timber, which would sometimes 

 float in the sea in such prodigious quantities, that they looked like moving 

 islands. I have seen several of those large trees on this shore, all deprived of 

 their bark and branches, and generally very much torn by the rocky passages, 

 through which, by the force of a falling stream, and their own weight, they 

 might be supposed to be driven. One great trunk of a tree particularly I have 

 seen pressed as a sugar-cane after it has passed the mill. Some are of opinion 

 that the mountains are sunk a little, and are not so high as they were: others 

 think the whole island is sunk something by the earthquake. Port-Royal is 

 said to be sunk a foot; and in many places in Liganee I have been told are 

 wells, which require not so long a rope to draw water out of them now, as be- 

 fore the earthquake, by two or three feet, which seems a sort of proof, that 

 either the land is sunk or the sea risen, the former of which seems most pro- 

 bable. Two gentlemen happened at the time of the earthquake to be in Lig- 

 anee, by the sea-side; where at the time of the great shake the sea retired from 

 the land in such sort, that for 2 or 300 yards the bottom of the sea appeared 

 dry, whereon they saw lie several fish, some of which the gentleman who was 

 with him ran and took up, and in a minute or two after the sea returned again, 

 and overflowed great part of the shore. At Yallhouse the sea is said to have 

 retired above a mile. It is thought there were lost in all parts of the island 

 2000 people, and had the shock happened in the night, very few would have 

 escaped alive; and those that had would in all probability have been knocked 

 in the head by the negroes, and the island to all intents and purposes quite 

 ruined. 



It is observed, that since the earthquake, the land-breezes often fail us, and 

 instead thereof, the sea-breezes often blow ail night; a thing rarely known be- 

 fore, but since common. In Port-Royal, and in many places all over the 

 island, much sulphureous combustible mntter has been found, supposed to 

 have been thrown out, on the opening of the earth, which on the first touch 

 of fire would flame and burn like a candle. 



St. Christopher's, one of the Caribee islands, was heretofore much troubled 

 with earthquakes; which, on an eruption of a great mountain there ofconx- 



