166 COSMOS. 



circling (rotatory) shocks of which the obelisks before the 

 monastery of San Bruno, in the small town of Stephano del 

 Bosco (Calabria, 1783), furnished such a well-known ex- 

 ample. Air, water, and earth-waves follow the same laws 

 which are recognized by the theory of motion, at all events 

 in space ; but the earth- waves are accompanied, in their de- 

 structive action, by phenomena which remain more obscure 

 in their nature, and belong to the class of physical processes. 

 As such we have to mention — discharges of elastic vapors, 

 and of gases ; or, as in the small, moving Moyacones of Pel- 

 ileo, grit-like mixtures of pyroxene crystals, carbon, and in- 

 fusorial animalcules with silicious shields. These wandering 

 cones have overthrown a great number of Indian huts.* 



In the general Delineation of Nature many facts are nar- 

 rated concerning the great catastrophe of Eiobamba (4th of 

 February, 1797), which were collected on the spot from the 

 lips of the survivors, with the most earnest endeavors after 

 historic truth. Some of them are analogous to the occur- 

 rences in the great earthquake of Calabria in the year 1783; 

 others are new, and especially characterized by the mine-like 

 manifestation of force frvm below upward. The earthquake 

 itself was neither accompanied nor announced by any subter- 

 ranean noise. A prodigious explosion, still indicated by the 

 simple name of el gran ruido, was not perceived until 18 or 

 20 minutes afterward, and only under the two cities of Quito 

 and Ibarra, far removed from Tacunga, Hambato, and the 

 principal scene of the destruction. There is no other event 

 in the troubled destinies of the human race by which in a 

 few minutes, and in sparingly-peopled mountain lands, ^o 

 many thousands at once may be overtaken by death, as by 

 the production and passage of a few earth-waves, accom- 

 panied by phenomena of cleavage ! 



In the earthquake of Riobamba, of which the celebrated 

 Valencian botanist, Don Jose Cavanilles, gave the earliest 

 account, the following phenomena are deserving of special 

 attention: Fissures which alternately opened and closed 

 again, so that men saved themselves by extending both arms 

 in order to prevent their sinking ; the disappearance of en- 

 tire caravans of riders or loaded mules (recuas), some of 

 which disappeared through transverse fissures suddenly open- 



* The Moyacones were seen by Boussingault nineteen years after I 

 saw them. " Muddy eruptions, consequences of the earthquake, like 

 the eruptions of the Moya of Felileo, which have buried entire vil- 

 lages" (Ann. de Chirn. et de Fhys.^ t. Iviii., p. 81). 



