456 
VOYAGE OF THE POTOMAC. 
[December, 
of tormenting insects ! The whole day was obscure and tempes- 
tuous; but the night was serene and clear, wanting only the ap- 
pearance of the stars ; which, however, are but seldom seen at 
this season. On the eighth, a very tempestuous and dark day — • 
the earth had three great movements ; the first, at two in the 
afternoon ;^ at three and three quarters, anothe-r ; and at four 
o'clock and six minutes the other, and the last during the day. 
As with December terminated the fatal year of seventeen hundred 
and forty-six, so with January commenced one still to be dreaded. 
On the first, every thing was quiet ; the earth still wore its general 
and natural appearance ; though this was in fact a mere truce be^ 
fore the renewal of convulsions about to take place ; as on the 
second, at about twelve o'clock in the day, there was a shock so 
sudden and so violent, that it might have produced anew the ruin 
and destruction of the past, had its duration continued for a few 
seconds longer. 
Amid the general excitement of this and the following days, 
the vice-king still thought of human glory; and in the ruined cas- 
tle of Callao, at seven in the morning of the sixteenth, laid the 
foundation of a work of the Pentagon, according to the plan 
which had been marked out by the royal hydrographer. During 
this day, also, there was a voice abroad, that the fire of heaven 
was about to consume what the movements of the earth had left 
uninjured. The fright appears to have been terrible ; depriving 
some of their lives, others of their reason, and affecting the re- 
mainder with such fears of a fatal calamity, that some expected a 
Vesuvius to overwhelm them — and others, to be consumed by 
the bursting forth of a new Etna ! 
" Sera el Cielo un Abysmo levantado, ' 
En que las negras Nubes imminentes, 
Pareceran al Orbe consternado 
Volantes Etnas, Lyparis pendientes ; 
Caeran luego de un Cielo imaginado 
Falsas revelationes, tan frequentes, ^ 
Que Cometas se haran aprehendidos, 
Mas eficaces mientras mas fingidos." 
From the seventh to the twentieth, the earth shook at eight 
different times, attended with sulphureous exhalations. On the 
twenty-first, a trembling was felt at half past one in the morn- 
