206 
SOUTH SEA 
we felt a motion of the ground that I shall never be able 
accurately to describe. It appeared to me, from the sen- 
sation I received, as if the earth was suddenly crushed 
by its own weight. It resembled very nearly the sensa- 
tion a person experiences when he takes a mass of snow 
in his hands, and endeavours to compress it ; it is that 
feeling, as if the snow was suddenly crushed within 
itself, that I am endeavouring to describe, — a crushing 
of the fibres,— a sudden contraction of the atoms, which 
every person must be familiar with. Such were my 
ideas the moment after I had experienced the shock. 
The water was so exceedingly luminous that, while 
we were rowing on board, it appeared, as it dripped from 
the oars which the men were plying, exactly like red- 
hot fluid metal. When I went on shore the following 
morning, I found that the inhabitants considered the 
earthquake of the preceding evening rather a violent 
one, it being sufficiently so as to cause a considerable 
rent in the wall of a Mr. Richardson’s house, an Eng- 
lishman, who has resided here for some time, and who 
stated to me that shocks of the kind I have mentioned 
were far from uncommon. 
From a few English gentlemen who had taken up 
their abode at this place, from motives of business, I 
received many tokens of British hospitality. A hundred 
and fifty degrees of longitude may separate a man from 
his native country, but the distance does not wean him 
from the feelings of his youth, which he has imbibed in 
the land of his birth ; the scorching rays of a tropical 
sun may blaze around him, and change the colour of 
