1832.] 
IIARTHQUAKES. 
453 
time before by clouds — dense and heavy vapours. But notwitli- 
standing the favourable aspect of the weather, an earthquake v^^as 
felt on that day, different from any that had preceded it. 
The earth seemed to sink down, without moving violently from 
one side to the other — again to move itself, without materially 
altering its position ; wanting the sounds and concussions of the 
other movements, it seemed as if it were swimming in some liquid 
element ! This new movement occasioned the greatest conster- 
nation among the inhabitants, as they feared that the earth was 
about to open its deep caverns and swallow them up ; as is said 
in Tacitus to have been the fate of several cities in Africa. 
This motion is a species of earthquake which may be called 
inclination — it being similar to that of a ship when exposed to 
the movements of the waves of the ocean. The subterranean 
winds being collected into a tempest, such earthquakes are likely 
to burst forth with great violence, as was actually the case near 
Callao, where a considerable portion of earth was cast off to some 
distance on the plains. A similar phenomenon is said to have 
happened at New Granada. 
At ten o'clock on the same night the clouds yielded a light 
rain, which continued falling until seven o'clock on the morning 
of the following day. It seemed as if this rain had opened the 
subterranean channels and pores with such rapid movement, that 
currents of exhalations, their particles mixed with nitric, sulphu- 
reous, and oleaginous substances, having been cooled and con- 
densed into malignant drops, returned to seek their place again 
in the centre of the earth ; destroying the vegetation of the fields, 
consuming the labours of the husbandman, and leaving the inhab- 
itants to breathe a pestiferous air — while they were exposed to 
colds, pleurisies, and dropsies, such as occurred in Lima after the 
great earthquake which happened in the year sixteen hundred 
and eighty-seven. At four o'clock in the morning a severe shock 
was felt — at seven o'clock another occurred, which finished the 
destruction that the first only fairly begun ! The poet Peralta, in 
his " Lima Fundada," has the following poetical, allusion to these 
two shocks : — 
" Dara el orbe mayor baylen segundo, 
Y acabara quanto dexo el primero : 
No Fabricas, la Fabrica del mundo — 
Teme al impulse vicilar severe ; - 
