392 CELEBES. [chap. xvii. 



be nearly vertical, rapid, vibratory, and jerking. It was 

 sufficient, I have no doubt, to have thrown down brick 

 chimneys and walls and church towers ; but as the houses 

 here are all low, and strongly framed of timber, it is impos- 

 sible for them to be much injured, except by a shock that 

 would utterly destroy a European city. The people told me 

 it was ten years since they had had a stronger shock than 

 this, at which time many houses were thrown down and 

 some people killed. 



At intervals of ten minutes to half an hour, slight 

 shocks and tremors were felt, sometimes strong enough to 

 send us all out again. There was a strange mixture of 

 the terrible and the ludicrous in our situation. We might 

 at any moment have a much stronger shock, which would 

 bring down the house over us, or — what I feared more — 

 cause a landslip, and send us down into the deep ravine 

 on the very edge of which the village is built ; yet I 

 could not help laughing each time we ran out at a slight 

 shock, and then in a few moments ran in again. The 

 sublime and the ridiculous were here literally but a step 

 apart. On the one hand, the most terrible and destructive 

 of natural phenomena was in action around us — the rocks, 

 the mountains, the solid earth were trembling and con- 

 vulsed, and we were utterly impotent to guard against the 

 danger that might at any moment overwhelm us. On the 

 other hand was the spectacle of a number of men, women, 



