EARTHQUAKE

One of the most formidable phenoplants. lie. As the name implies, n consists of a violent agitation of the earth, accompanied by various other mens more or le singular ami destructive in their effect n in character, as the following enumeration of concomitant circumstances, gleaned from the accounts of various earthquakes that have occnirt'tl in ancleol ami m s, will sufficiently evince. Earthquake* are usually preceded by a g> I stillne in the air, am) an unnatural agitation of the waters lakes. The shoe k comes on with a dl • p rumbling noise, like that of a carriage over a tough pave- n it ■ unary, a. d. 447, subterranean thunders were heard from the Black to Ihe Red Sea, and the earth was convulsed without intermi ion, for the space of six months; anil in I'hrvgia, many cities and large tracts of ground were swallowed up. On the 30th of May, a. d ol Antioch was ovi-rwhelmed by a dreadful earthquake, and 260,000 of its inhabitants are said to have I in its ruins. In the year 1316, Asia Minor and Egypt w. re violently shaken; and In the following year severe earthquakes were experienced in Cyprus, i Italy. In 1692, the island of Jamaica was visited by a terrible earthquake, in which enormous ma es of earth were detached from the Blue Mountains; and vast quantities, of timber, hurled from their Hanks..Ijacent sen, like floating islands. It was during this earthquake that the city of Port Royal, with a large tract ol adjacent land, stink Instantaneously Into Ihe sea. In Ihe following year earthquakes occurred in Sicily, which destroyed Catania and 140 other towns and villages, with 100,000 of their inhabitants. Since Ihe records of history, there have been no earth quakes equal in intensity to those which ravaged different parts of the world In Ihe eighteenth century. Pa im: the convulsion which in 1746 nearly laid waste Lower Peru, and those by which in 1750 the ancient town of Conccpcion in Chili was totally destroyed, we come to 1755, when the city of Lisbon was almost wholly destroyed by one of the most destructive earthquakes which ever occurred in Europe. It continued only six minutes; but such was the violence of the convulsion, that in that short space upwards of 60,000 persona are said lo have perished. The phenomena that accompanied it were no le striking The sea first retired and laid the bar dry; it then rolled in, rising [s. 391]