/ 
54 NATURAL HISTORY 
Sea advanced and retired, with an impetuofity not to be refitted ; 
and yet no life, or boat, or fhip was loft. The ftrft and fecond 
fluxes and refluxes were not fo violent as the third and fourth, at 
which time the Sea was as rapid as that of a mill-ftream defending 
to an under-fhot wheel, and the rebounds of the Sea continued in 
their full fury for two hours ; they then grew fainter gradually, and 
the whole commotion ceafed about low-water. In Penzance pier, 
three miles Weft of the Mount, the tide rofe eight feet, and in 
Newlyn pier, one mile farther Weft, ten feet high, the water com- 
ing from the South-Eaft, being as it were accumulated by the 
Weftern head-lands, which form Gwavas Lake near the laft-men- 
tioned pier ; but no material damage was done at either place. 
The fame agitation, though fomewhat later in the day, was ob- 
ferved in the Northern Channel at the pier of St. Ives, where the 
higheft water rofe betwixt eight and nine feet, and in Heyl Harbour 
adjoining, one rife was feven feet, the reft little more than two y . 
All this while there was not the leaft trembling or motion of the 
earth perceived in any parts near us ; but on the fame day, about 
ten o’clock in the morning, the moft dreadful Earthquake ever 
known happened on the Weftern coafts of Portugal and Spain. The 
city of Lifbon was deftroyed, 30,000 perfons, fome fay more, loft 
their lives, St. Ubes, Sevil, Cadiz, St. Lucar, Oporto, Faro, were 
greatly damaged, and many lives loft. Ships ftxty leagues diftant from 
Lifbon, to the Weft, felt the fhock in the fame degree as if they 
had ftruck upon rocks. The Tagus rofe from ten and twenty to 
thirty feet perpendicular, ebbing and flowing feveral times, but 
every time decreafing ; and between the agitations of the Sea, and 
the violent fliaking of the earth, the defolations of that country are 
not to be exprefled, and have never yet been exactly eftimated. 
What connexion with or relation to thefe violent convulflons on 
the Continent our little, and (thanks to Providence) momentary 
agitations of the Sea on the coafts of Britain had, ’tis difficult to 
fay ; but their happening both on the fame day, and within a few 
hours of one another, the many repeated fluctuations in the river 
Tagus as here in Cornwall, by alternate fwells and linkings, the 
fhocks felt on the fame day far to the Weft by feveral fhips ; all 
thefe circumftances feem to declare very conftftently, that what we 
felt was either the fainter part of that deplorable fhock at Lifbon, or 
the laft expiring efforts of fome fimilar fubterraneous ftruggles far- 
ther to the Weft and South- Weft under the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed, 
y At Swanfea, in Wales, where their tide is 
later than with us, and the land farther to the 
North, the agitation, by the accounts publifhed 
from thence, was fome hours later, by which it 
is more than probable that the momentum of this 
unufual agitation had its firft rife far to the South 
of us. 
it 
