EARTHQUAKES. 167 



ing in their path, while others, flying back, escaped the dan- 

 ger ; such violent oscillations (non-simultaneous elevation 

 and depression) of neighboring portions of the ground, that 

 people standing upon the choir of a church at a height of 

 more than 12 feet got upon the pavement of the street with- 

 out falling ; the sinking of massive houses,* in which the 

 inhabitants could open inner doors, and for two whole days, 

 before they were released by excavations, passed uninjured 

 from room to room, procured lights, fed upon supplies acci- 

 dentally discovered, and disputed with each other regarding 

 the probability of their rescue ; and the disappearance of 

 such great masses of stones and building materials. Old 

 Riobamba contained churches and monasteries among houses 

 of several stories ; and yet, when I took the plan of the de- 

 stroyed city, I only found in the ruins heaps of stone of eight 

 to ten feet in height. In the southwestern part of Old Kio- 

 bamba (the former Barrio de Sigchuguaicu) a mine-like ex- 

 plosion, the effect of a force from below upward, was dis- 

 tinctly perceptible. On the Cerro de la Culca^ a liill of some 

 hundred feet in height, which rises above the Cerro de Cum- 

 bicarca, situated to the north of it, there lies stony rubbish 

 mixed with human bones. Translatory movements, in a hori' 

 zontal direction, by which avenues of trees become displaced 

 without being uprooted, or fragments of cultivated ground 

 of very different kinds mutually cfisplace each other, have 

 occurred repeatedly in Quito, as well as in Calabria. A 

 still more remarkable and complicated phenomenon is the 

 discovery of utensils belonging to one house in the ruins of 

 another at a great distance — a circumstance which has given 

 rise to lawsuits. Is it, as the natives believe, a sinking fol- 

 lowed by an eruption? or, notwithstanding the distance, a 

 mere projection"? As, in nature, every thing is repeated 

 when similar conditions again occur, we must, by not con- 

 cealing even what is still imperfectly observed, call the atten- 

 tion of future observers to special phenomena. 



According to my observations, it must not be forgotten 



* Upon the displacement of buildings and plantations during the 

 earthquake o^ Calabria, see Lyell's Principles of Geology^ vol. i,, p. 

 484-491. Upon escapes in fissures during the great earthquake of 

 Riobamba, see my Relation Historique^ tome ii., p. 642. As a re- 

 markable example of the closing of a fissure, it must be mentioned 

 that, according to Scacchi's report, during the celebrated earthquake 

 (in the summer of 1851) in the Neapolitan province of Basilicata, a 

 hen was found caught by both feet in the street pavement in Barile, 

 near Melfi. 



