194 EARTHQUAKES. 
ceptional; although the extent and severity of the 
Charleston earthquake exceed anything heretofore ex- 
perienced in the United States. It affected an area of 
nine hundred thousand square miles. 
To speak of the effects of earthquakes on land and 
water is to recite the story of the destruction of Charles- 
ton, South Carolina, last August ; of Port Royal in 1692 ; 
the immense and frightful cleavage phenomena during 
the Calabrian earthquake of 1783—when the earth 
opened in fissures one hundred feet wide and two hun- 
dred feet deep ; in 1158 an earthquake felt in England 
caused the ‘‘drying up of the Thames so that it could 
be crossed on foot even at London’’; coast lines have 
been changed; mountains have been thrown-down; — 
‘‘valleys have been filled; cities have been submerged 
or buried,’? and human lives have been destroyed by 
thousands. 
In 1868 when St. Thomas was shaken the sea receded ; 
at Lisbon it rose ina mighty wave sixty feet in height 
and fell with destructive force upon the city already 
shattered by the terrible force of the land vibrations. - 
When Lima was destroyed in 1724, a sea wave eighty 
feet in height poured over Callao. 
When Callao and Lima were again destroyed in 1746, 
the sea rose to eighty feet in height and came rushing 
over the towns seventeen hours after the land shocks 
_ had passed away. : 
In 1737, on the coast of Lupatka, the sea rose above 
its level to the immense height of two hundred ten feet. 
These sea waves extend their influence over vast areas. 
Thus the great earthquake of Lisbon sent waves across 
the Atlantic to our shores in nine and a half hours. 
The wave of 1868—destroying twenty five thousand lives 
on the coast of South America—extended over the entire 
Pacific, traveling at the average rate of five hundred 
eleven feet per second. 
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