1G2 
EARTHQUAKES. 
the same time an enormous opening was formed in the 
mountains of Cariaco, on the shores of the gulf bearing thal 
name, when a great body of salt-water, mixed with asphaltum. 
issued from the micaceous schist. Earthquakes were verv 
frequent about the end of the sixteenth century ; and, accord- 
ing to the traditions preserved at Cumana, 'the sea often 
inundated the shores, rising from fifteen to twenty fathoms. 
As no record exists at Cumana, and its archives, owing to 
the continual devastations of the termites, or white ants, 
contain no document that goes back farther than a hundred 
and fifty years, we are unacquainted with the precise dates of 
the ancient earthquakes. We only know, that, in times 
nearer our own, the year 1776 was at once the most fatal to 
the colonists, and the most remarkable for the physical 
history of the country. The city of Cumana was entirely 
destroyed, the houses were overturned in the space of a few 
minutes, and the shocks were hourly repeated during fourteen 
months. In several parts of the province the earth opened, 
and threw out sulphureous waters. These irruptions were 
very frequent in a plain extending towards Casanay, two 
leagues east of the town of Cariaco, and known by the name 
of the hollow ground (tierra liueca), because it appears 
entirely undermined by thermal springs. During the years 
1766 and 1767, the inhabitants of Cumana encamped in their 
streets ; and they began to rebuild their houses only when 
the earthquakes recurred once a-month. What was felt 
at Quito, immediately after the great catastrophe of Fe- 
bruary 1797, took place on these coasts. While the ground 
was in a state of continual oscillation, the atmosphere 
seemed to dissolve itself into water. 
Tradition states that in the earthquake of 1766, as well 
as in another remarkable one in 1794, the shocks were mere 
horizontal oscillations ; it was only on the disastrous 14th of 
December, 1797, that for the first time at Cumana the 
motion was felt hy an upheaving of the ground. More than 
Benzoni, Hist, del Mondo Nuovo, pp. 3, 31, and 33. James Castellon 
arrived at St. Domingo in 1521, after the appearance of the celebrated 
Bartholomew de las Casas in these countries. On attentively reading the 
narratives of Benzoni and Caulin, wc find that the fort of Castellon was 
built near the mouth of the Mauzanares (alia ripa del fiume de Cumana) ; 
and not, as some modern travellers have asserted, on the mountain where 
now stands the castle of San Antonio. 
