216 



COSMOS. 



in my opinion, the result of a recollection of those fearful pic- 

 tures of devastation presented to our imaginations by the his- 

 torical 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 an i the im- 

 mobility of the soil on which we tread ; and this feeling is con- 

 firmed 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. Animals, es- 

 pecially dogs and swine, participate in the same anxious dis- 

 quietude ; and even the crocodiles of the Orinoco, which are 

 at other times as dumb as our little lizards, leave the trem- 

 bling 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 vol- 

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

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

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

 feel as if we trod upon the very focus of destruction. This con- 

 di tion of the mind is not of long duration, although it takes its 

 origin in the deepest recesses of our nature ; and when a se- 

 ries of faint shocks succeed one another, the inhabitants of the 

 country soon lose every trace of fear. On the coasts of Peru, 

 where rain and hail are unknown, no less than the rolling 

 thunder and the flashing lightning, these luminous explosions 

 of the atmosphere are replaced by the subterranean noises 

 which accompany earthquakes.* Long habit, and the very 



* [" Along the whole coast of Pein the atmosphere is almost uni- 

 formly in a state of repose. It is not illuminated by the lightning's flash, 

 or disturbed by the roar of the thunder; no deluges of rain, no fierce 

 hurricanes, destroy the fruits of the fields, and with them the hopes of 

 the husbandman. But the mildness of the elements above ground is 

 frightfully counterbalanced by their subterranean fury. Lima is fre 

 quently visited by earthquakes, and several times the city has beeu 

 reduced to a mass of ruins. At an average, forty-five shocks may bo 

 counted on in the year. Most of them occur in the latter part of Octo- 



