542 Sir J. Prestwich, Bart, — Notes on Earthquakes. 



that it gapeth for moisture, whicli falling in at night it greedily 

 swallows th or imbibeth all the sundry exhalations of heat and cold 

 generated by virtue of the sun, etc., and these being further attracted 

 by the intei'nal pores of the earth and other concommitant matter, 

 quickly causeth a fermentation, which being pent within the con- 

 cavities of the earth, and not having proper vent to issue forth by 

 reason of the vapors, grossness, unctuosity, and inflammability, 

 which penetrating through the different intricacys, and combating 

 with the minute and close compactedness of the different stratas 

 that compose the body of the earth which involves them, and therein 

 increasing, and being pent up, and not finding a passage out, it 

 swells, and thus further impregnating the earth with a combustable 

 which at length bursts forth and so violently shakes the earth as to 

 cause a trembleing with a dreadful noise, which is sometimes attended 

 with flames of fire and such internal convulsions and falling in of 

 mountains and leveling of them, sinking of islands and other grounds 

 as Helice and Buris : so likewise of the earth, which once was where 

 now is only three deep pits at Oxenhall, in the county of Durham, 

 commonly called Hell-kettles, in the 24th of Henry II., and which 

 the Chronicle of Tinmouih witnesseth in these words. That a.d. 1179, 

 upon Christmas-Day, at Oxenhall, in the out-fields of Darlington, in 

 the Bishoprick of Durham, the earth rais'd itself up to a great height 

 in the manner of a lofty tower, and remained all that day till the 

 evening (as it were fix'd and unmoveable) in that posture ; but then 

 it sunk down with such a horrid noise that it terrified all the neigh- 

 bors, and the earth suck'd it in, and made there a deep pit which 

 continues to this day. So also have the effects of earthquakes been 

 recorded as the conversion of plain fields into mountains, and the 

 raising of mountains in the sea, as Thia, Theragia, Delos, Ehodes, 

 etc. Thus in like manner have mountains, buildings, trees, etc., 

 been translated from one place to another, not to mention the follow- 

 ing, as that of a whole town in Lombardy, in the reign of Henry the 

 First ; that in the thirteenth of Queen Elizabeth, of a hill of twenty 

 acres, with a great rock under it, at Kinaston, in Herefordshire ; and 

 that of another in Anno 1583, which removed a field of three acres 

 at Blackmore in Dorsetshire. Other consequences have been as the 

 driving away or cutting the neck of some Isthmus from the Conti- 

 nent. For thus (saith Seneca) was Sicily divided from Calabria ; 

 Spain from Africa ; and, if Verstegan say true, our Britain from 

 France, not to mention those that have happened in our days at 

 Lisbon, in Portugal, or those in Italy. Not to mention that which 

 happened in Jamaica in the year 1692, which was owing to eruptions 

 of fire that haveing consumed the bowels of the earth the ground 

 sunk in, and the opening was so wide and dreadful that trees, houses, 

 etc., were swallowed up ; thus answering King David's account 

 when he sayeth, " The earth shook and trembled, the foundations also of 

 the hills moved, and were shaken ; because he was loroth.'" The con- 

 tinuance of earthquakes are uncertain, seeing that they are only in 

 proportion to the greatness of their close vapour and firmness and 

 solidity of the earth, that contain gross airs and sulphureous or 



