BARON HUMBOLDT'S LAST VOLUME.

Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent. Vol. 4. London, 1819.

For ten years past, Baron Humboldt has been engaged in publishing, in detached parts, his learned and interesting observations and discoveries in the interior regions of South- America, and New-Mexico.

In Europe his various works have been eagerly sought after, and the learned and curious inquirers of France, England, and Germany, have complimented this celebrated traveller with the highest eulogiums.

The calculating, and to us, the tedious manner in which the Baron continues to yield to the eager curiosity of the world his scientific researches, and his adventures, may have the effect of continually refreshing our memory with the recollection of his former works, and keeping alive the interest derived from his new and successive publications; but, the lapse of twenty years that has occurred since his travels in those regions, and the dreadful revolutions that have since convulsed, and are still continuing to ravage those devoted regions, are diverting our minds to the interest that would be excited by more recent description.

Of the former volumes of this narrative, two only have been printed in this country, and the remainder, we presume, will not be republished until the termination of the series can be discovered, as it can hardly be expected that any bookseller will venture again to begin a work of such indefinite extent.

Taking his departure from Caraccas, he describes the mountainous regions of San Pedro, and of Los Teques, La Victoria, the Valleys of Aragua, the Lake of Tacarigua, the Hot Springs of Mariara; then descends toward the coasts of Porto Cabello; describes the mountains that separate the valleys of Aragua from the Llanos of Caraccas, Villa de Cura, Parapara, the great Llanos, or Plains, Calabozo, San Fernando De Apure; descends the river Apure to its confluence with the great Oroonoko; and ascends the Oroonoko beyond the mountains of Encuramada, Uruana, Baraguam, the mouth of the Meta, and above the Cataracts of the Oroonoko, where the volume abruptly terminates.

The closing part of this interesting voyage will undoubtedly be in due time laid before the public, who can only await with exemplary patience the time that may suit the learned traveller to publish the remainder, or the conclusion of his observations.

In the mean time, we propose to present our readers with such portions of his recently published and most interesting volume, as we may find suitable to our pages.

We left Caraccas on the 7th of February, in the cool of the evening, and began our journey to the Oroonoko.

The remembrance of that departure is more painful to us now than it was some years ago.

Our friends have perished in the sanguinary revolutions, which have successively given liberty to those distant regions, and deprived them of it.

The house which we inhabited is now a heap of ruins.

Tremendous earthquakes have changed the surface of the soil.

The city, which I have described, has disappeared; and on the same spot, on the ground fissured in various directions, another city is slowly rising.

Already those heaps of ruins, the grave of a numerous population, are become anew the habitation of men.

In retracing changes of so general an interest, I shall be led to notice events that took place long after my return to Europe. I shall pass over in silence the popular commotions, and the modifications which the state of society has undergone.

Modern nations, careful of their own remembrance, snatch from oblivion the history of human revolutions, which is that of ardent passions, and inveterate hatred.

It is not the same with respect to the revolutions of the physical world.

These are described with the least accuracy when they happen to coincide with the period of civil dissentions.

Earthquakes, and the eruptions of volcanoes, strike the imagination by the evils which are their necessary consequence.

Tradition seizes in preference whatever is vague and marvellous; and amid great public calamities, as in private misfortunes, man seems to shun that light which leads us to discover the real causes of events, and recognise the circumstances by which they are attended.

I have thought proper to record in this work all I have been able to collect, with certainty, respecting the earthquake of the 26th of March, 1812, which destroyed the town of Caraccas; and by which more than twenty thousand persons perished, almost at the same instant, in the province of Venezuela.

The intercourse which I have kept up with persons of all classes has enabled me to compare the description of many eye-witnesses, and to interrogate them on objects that may throw light on physical science in general.

The traveller, being the historian of nature, should authenticate the dates of great catastrophes, examine their connection and mutual relations, and mark, in the rapid course of ages, in this continual progress of successive changes, those fixed points with which other catastrophes may one day be compared.

All epochas approach each other in the immensity of time comprehended in the history of nature.

Years passed away seem but a few instants; and if the physical descriptions of a country do not excite a very powerful and general interest, they have, at least, the advantage of never becoming old.

Similar considerations, no doubt, led Mr.

De la Condamine to describe, in his Voyage a l'Equateur, the memorable eruptions of the volcano of Cotopaxi, which took place long after his departure from Quito.

Following the example of this celebrated traveller, I think I shall the less deserve blame, as the events which I am going to relate will serve to elucidate the theory of volcanic reactions, or the influence of a system of volcanoes on a vast space of circumjacent country.

Those of the 30th of November, 1744, and of the 3d of September, 1750.

(Introd. Hist. p. 156 and 160.)

At the time that Mr. Bonpland and myself inhabited the provinces of New Andalusia, Nueva Barcelona, and Caraccas, a general opinion prevailed, that the easternmost parts of these coasts were the most exposed to the destructive effects of earthquakes.

The inhabitants of Cumana dreaded the valley of Caraccas, on account of its damp and variable climate, and its gloomy and foggy sky; while the inhabitants of that temperate valley considered Cumana as a town where only a burning air was breathed, and where the soil is periodically agitated by violent commotions.

Forgetful of the overthrow of Riobamba, and other very elevated towns; ignorant that the peninsula of Araya, composed of micaslate, has partaken of the commotions of the calcareous coast of Cumana; well-informed persons thought they perceived motives of security in the structure of the primitive rocks of Caraccas, as well as in the elevated situation of this valley.

Religious ceremonies celebrated at La Guayra, and even in the capital, in the middle of the night, recalled, no doubt, to their memory, that the province of Venezuela had been subject, at intervals, to earthquakes; but dangers that seldom recur, are slightly feared.

Cruel experience destroyed, in 1811, the charm of theory, and of popular opinions.

Caraccas, situate in the mountains, three degrees west of Cumana, and five degrees west of the volcanoes of the Caribbee islands, has felt greater shocks than were ever experienced on the coast of Paria or New Andalusia.

For instance, the nocturnal procession of the 21st of October, instituted in commemoration of the great earthquake which took place on that day of the month, at one in the morning, in 1778.

Other very violent shocks were those of 1641, 1703, and 1802.

At my arrival in Terra Firma, I was struck with the connection of two physical events, the destruction of Cumana on the 14th of December, 1797, and the eruption of the volcanoes in the smaller West India islands.

This connection has been again manifested in the destruction of Caraccas on the 26th of March, 1812.

The volcano of Guadaloupe seemed to have reacted, in 1797, on the coasts of Cumana.

Fifteen years after, it was a volcano situate nearer the continent, that of St. Vincent's, which appeared to have extended it's influence as far as Caraccas and the banks of the Apure.

It is possible that, at these two epochas, the centre of the explosion was at an immense depth, equally distant from the regions toward which the motion was propagated at the surface of the globe.

See vol, ii. p. 231.

From the beginning of 1811 till 1813, a vast extent of the earth, limited by the meridian of the Azores, the valley of the Ohio, the Cordilleras of New Grenada, the coasts of Venezuela, and the volcanoes of the smaller West India islands, has been shaken almost at the same time by commotions; which may be attributed to subterraneous fires.

The following series of phenomena seems to indicate communications at enormous distances.

On the 30th of January, 1811, a submarine volcano appeared near the island of St. Michael, one of the Azores.

At a place where the sea was sixty fathoms deep, a rock appeared above the surface of the waters.

The heaving up of the softened crust of the globe appears to have preceded the eruption of flames by the crater, as had already been observed at the volcanoes of Jorullo in Mexico, and at the apparition of the little island of Kameni near Santorino.

The new islet of the Azores was at first nothing more than a shoal; but on the 15th of January an eruption, which lasted six days, enlarged its extent, and carried it progressively to the height of fifty toises above the surface of the sea.

This new land, of which Captain Tillard hastened to take possession in the name of the British government, calling it Sabrina island, was nine hundred toises in diameter.

It has again, it seems, been swallowed up by the ocean.

This is the third time that submarine volcanoes have presented this extraordinary spectacle near the island of St. Michael; and, as if the eruptions of these volcanoes were subject to a regular period, owing to a certain accumulation of elastic fluids, the island raised up has appeared at intervals of ninety-one or ninetytwo years.

It is to be regretted that, notwithstanding the proximity of the spot, no European government, or learned society, has sent natural philosophers and geologists to the Azores, to investigate a phenomenon which would throw so much light on the history of volcanoes, and on that of the globe in general.

Between the latitudes of 5° and 36° North, and the meridians of 31° and 91° West from Paris.

See vol. i. p. 240.

Malte Brun, Geogra. Univ. vol. iii. p. 177-- 180 There remains, however, some doubt respecting the eruption of 1628, which some place in 1638.

The rising always happened near the island of St. Michael, though not identically on the same spot.

It is remarkable that the small island of 1720 reached the same elevation as the island of Sabrina in 1811.

See above, vol. i chap. i. p. 95.

At the time of the appearance of the new island of Sabrina, the smaller West India islands, situate eight hundred leagues to the south-west of the Azores, experienced frequent earthquakes.

More than two hundred shocks were felt from the month of May, 1811, to April, 1812, in the island of St. Vincent; one of the three where there are still active volcanoes.

The commotion did not remain circumscribed to that insular portion of Eastern America.

From the 16th of December, 1811, the earth was almost incessantly agitated in the valleys of the Mississippi, the Arkansas, and the Ohio.

The oscillations were more feeble on the east of the Alleghanies than to the west of these mountains, in Tennessee and Kentucky.

They were accompanied by a great subterraneous noise, coming from the south-west.

At the spots between New Madrid and Little Prairie, as at the Saline, north of Cincinnati, in latitude 37° 45', the shocks were felt every day, nay, almost every hour, during several months.

The whole of these phenomena lasted from the 16th of December, 1811, till the year 1813.

The commotion, confined at first to the south, in the valley of the lower Mississippi, appeared to advance slowly toward the north.

See the interesting description of these earthquakes, given by Mr. Mitchill, in the Trans.

of the Liter. and Phil. Soc. of New York, vol. i. p. 281--308; and by Mr. Drake, in the Nat. and Stat.

View of Cincinnati, p. 232--238.

At the same period, when this long series of earthquakes began in the Transalleghanian States, in the month of December, 1811, the town of Caraccas felt the first shock in calm and serene weather.

This coincidence of phenomena was probably not accidental; for we must not forget that, notwithstanding the distance which separates these countries, the low grounds of Louisiana, and the coasts of Venezuela and Cumana, belong to the same basin, that of the Gulf of Mexico.

This Mediterranean sea, with several outlets, runs from the south-east to the northwest; and an ancient prolongation of it seems to be found in those vast plains, rising gradually thirty, fifty, and eighty toises above the level of the ocean, covered with secondary formations, and watered by the Ohio, the Missouri, the Arkansas, and the Mississippi.

When we consider geologically the basin of the Caribbean sea, and of the Gulf of Mexico, we find it bounded on the south by the chain of the coast of Venezuela and the Cordilleras of Merida and Pamplona; on the east by the mountains of the West India islands, and the Alleghanies; on the west by the Andes of Mexico, and the Stony Mountains; and on the north by very inconsiderable elevations which separate the Canadian lakes from the rivers that flow into the Mississippi.

More than two-thirds of this basin are covered with water.

It is bordered by two ranges of active volcanoes; to the east, in the Caribbee islands, between the latitudes of 13° and 16°; and to the west in the Cordilleras of Nicaragua, Guatimala, and Mexico, between 11° and 20°.

When we reflect that the great earthquake at Lisbon, of the 1st of November, 1755, was felt almost at the same moment on the coasts of Sweden, at lake Ontario, and at the island of Martinico, it will not appear too daring to suppose, that all this basin of the West Indies, from Cumana and Caraccas as far as the plains of Louisiana, may be simultaneously agitated by commotions proceeding from the same centre of action.

Cincinnati, situated on the Ohio, in latitude 39° 6 min has only eighty-five toises absolute elevation.

It is with regret I use this vague and improper denomination, which is given to the northern prolongation of the mountains of New Mexico. I should prefer the name of Chippewan Range, which Mr. Drake (Stat. View of Cincinnati, p. 91.) and other geographers of the United States, begin to substitute for the received denomination of Stony Mountains; but nations almost of the same name, very distant from each other, and speaking different languages, the Chippeways of the sources of the Mississippi, and the Chepewyans of the Slave Lake, described by Pike and Mackenzie, may occasion those mountains to the south and south-west of the great Canadian lakes, which lie east and west, to be confounded with the Stony Mountains, which run north and south.

An opinion very generally prevails on the coasts of Terra Firma, that earthquakes become more frequent when electric explosions have been very rare during some years.

It is thought to have been observed, at Cumana and Caraccas, that the rains were less frequently attended with thunder from the year 1792; and the total destruction of Cumana in 1797, and the commotions felt in 1800, 1801, and 1802, at Maracaibo, Porto Cabello, and Caraccas, have not failed to be attributed to "an accumulation of electricity in the interior of the earth."

It would be difficult for a person who has lived a long time in New Andalusia, or in the low regions of Peru, to deny that the season the most to be dreaded, from the frequency of earthquakes, is that of the beginning of the rains, which is, however, the time of thunder storms.

The atmosphere, and the slate of the surface of the globe, seem to have an influence unknown to us on the changes produced at great depths; and I believe, that the connection which some persons pretend to recognise between the absence of thunder storms and the frequency of earthquakes, is rather a physical hypothesis, framed by the half-learned of the country, than the result of long experience.

The coincidence of certain phenomena may be favoured by chance.

The extraordinary commotions felt almost continually during two years on the borders of the Mississippi and the Ohio, and which coincided in 1812 with those of the valley of Caraccas, were preceded at Louisiana by a year almost exempt from thunder storms.

Every mind was again struck with this phenomenon.

We cannot deem it strange that in the country of Franklin a great predilection is retained for explanations founded on the theory of electricity.

Depons, vol. i. p. 125.

Trans. of New York, vol. i. p. 285; Drake, p. 210.

The shock felt at Caraccas in the month of December, 1811, was the only one that preceded the horrible catastrophe of the 26th of March, 1812.

The inhabitants of Terra Firma were ignorant of the agitations of the volcano in the island of St.

Vincent on one side, and on the other, of those that were felt in the basin of the Mississippi, where, on the 7th and 8th of February, 1812, the earth was day and night in perpetual oscillation.

A great drought prevailed at this period in the province of Venezuela.

Not a single drop of rain had fallen at Caraccas, or in the country ninety leagues round, during the five months which preceded the destruction of the capital.

The 26th of March was a remarkably hot day.

The air was calm, and the sky unclouded.

It was Holy Thursday, and a great part of the population was assembled in the churches.

Nothing seemed to presage the calamities of the day.

At seven minutes after four in the afternoon the first shock was felt; it was sufficiently powerful to make the bells of the churches toll; it lasted five or six seconds, during which time the ground was in a continual undulating movement, and seemed to heave up like a boiling liquid.

The danger was thought to be past, when a tremendous subterraneous noise was heard, resembling the rolling of thunder, but louder, and of longer continuance, than that heard within the tropics in time of storms.

This noise preceded a perpendicular motion of three or four seconds, followed by an undulatory movement somewhat longer.

The shocks were in opposite directions, from north to south, and from east to west.

Nothing could resist the movement from beneath upward, and undulations crossing each other.

The town of Caraccas was entirely overthrown.

Thousands of the inhabitants (between nine and ten thousand) were buried under the ruins of the houses and churches.

The procession had not yet set out; but the crowd was so great in the churches, that nearly three or four thousand persons were crushed by the fall of their vaulted roofs.

The explosion was stronger toward the north, in that part of the town situate nearest the mountain of Avila, and the Silla.

The churches of La Trinidad and Alta Gracia, which were more than one hundred and fifty feet high, and the naves of which were supported by pillars of twelve or fifteen feet diameter, left a mass of ruins scarcely exceeding five or six feet in elevation.

The sinking of the ruins has been so considerable that there now scarcely remain any vestiges of pillars or columns.

The barracks, called El Quartel de San Carlos, situate farther north of the church of the Trinity, on the road from the custom-house de la Pastora, almost entirely disappeared.

A regiment of troops of the line, that was assembled under arms, ready to join the procession, was, with the exception of a few men, buried under the ruins of this great edifice.

Nine tenths of the fine town of Caraccas were entirely destroyed.

The walls of the houses that were not thrown down, as those of the street San Juan, near the Capuchin Hospital, were cracked in such a manner that it was impossible to run the risk of inhabiting them.

The effects of the earthquake were somewhat less violent in the western and southern parts of the city, between the principal square and the ravine of Caraquata.

There, the cathedral, supported by enormous buttresses, remains standing.

Sur le Tremblement de Terre de Venezuela, en 1812, par M. Delpeche. MS.

Estimating at nine or ten thousand the number of the dead in the city of Caraccas, we do not include those unhappy persons who, dangerously wounded, perished several months after, for want of food and proper care.

The night of Holy Thursday presented the most distressing scene of desolation and sorrow.

That thick cloud of dust which, rising above the ruins, darkened the sky like a fog, had settled on the ground.

No shock was felt, and never was a night more calm or more serene.

The Moon, nearly full, illumined the rounded domes of the Silla, and the aspect of the sky formed a perfect contrast to that of the earth, covered with the dead, and heaped with ruins.

Mothers were seen bearing in their arms their children, whom they hoped to recall to life.

Desolate families wandered through the city, seeking a brother, a husband, a friend, of whose fate they were ignorant, and whom they believed to be lost in the crowd.

The people pressed along the streets, which could no more be recognized but by long lines of ruins.

All the calamities experienced in the great catastrophes of Lisbon, Messina, Lima, and Riobamba, were renewed on the fatal day of the 26th of March, 1812.

"The wounded, buried under the ruins, implored, by their cries, the help of the passers by, and nearly two thousand were dug out.

Never was pity displayed in a more affecting manner; never had it been seen more ingeniously active than in the efforts employed to save the miserable victims whose groans reached the ear.

Implements for digging, and clearing away the ruins, were entirely wanting; and the people were obliged to use their bare hands to disinter the living.

The wounded, as well as the sick who had escaped from the hospitals, were laid on the banks of the small river Guayra.

They found no shelter but the foliage of trees.

Beds, linen to dress the wounds, instruments of surgery, medicines, and objects of the most urgent necessity, were buried under the ruins.

Every thing, even food, was wanting during the first days.

Water became alike scarce in the interior of the city.

The commotion had rent the pipes of the fountains; the falling in of the earth had choaked up the springs that supplied them; and it became necessary, in order to have water, to go down to the river Guayra, which was considerably swelled; and then vessels to convey the water were wanting.

There remained a duty to be fulfilled toward the dead, enjoined at once by piety, and the dread of infection.

It being impossible to inter so many thousand corpses, half buried under the ruins, commissaries were appointed to burn the bodies: and for this purpose funeral piles were erected between the heaps of ruins.

This ceremony lasted several days.

Amid so many public calamities, the people devoted themselves to those religious duties, which they thought were the most fitted to appease the wrath of Heaven.

Some, assembling in processions, sung funeral hymns; others, in a state of distraction, confessed themselves aloud in the streets.

In this town was now repeated what had been remarked in the province of Quito, after the tremendous earthquake of 1797: a number of marriages were contracted between persons, who had neglected for many years to sanction their union by the sacerdotal benediction.

Children found parents, by whom they had never till then been acknowledged; restitutions were promised by persons, who had never been accused of fraud; and families, who had long been enemies, were drawn together by the tie of common calamity.

If this feeling seemed to calm the passions of some, and open the heart to pity, it had a contrary effect on others, rendering them more rigid and inhuman.

In great calamities vulgar minds preserve still less goodness than strength: misfortune acts in the same manner, as the pursuits of literature and the study of nature; their happy influence is felt only by a few, giving more ardour to sentiment, more elevation to the thoughts, and more benevolence to the disposition.

Shocks as violent as those, which in the space of one minute overthrew the city of Caraccas, could not be confined to a small portion of the continent.

Their fatal effects extended as far as the provinces of Venezuela, Varinas, and Maracaybo, along the coast; and still more to the inland mountains.

La Guayra, Mayquetia, Antimano, Baruta, La Vega, San Felipe, and Merida, were almost entirely destroyed.

The number of the dead exceeded four or five thousand at La Guayra, and at the town of San Felipe, near the copper mines of Aroa.

It appears, that it was on a line running East-North-East, and West-South-West, from La Guayra and Caraccas to the lofty mountains of Niquitao and Merida, that the violence of the earthquake was principally directed.

It was felt in the kingdom of New Grenada from the branches of the high Sierra de Santa Martha as far as Santa Fe de Bogota and Honda, on the banks of the Magdalena, one hundred and eighty leagues from Caraccas.

It was every where more violent in the Cordilleras of gneiss and micaslate, or immediately at their foot, than in the plains, and this difference was particularly striking in the savannahs of Varinas and Cassanara.

(This is easily explained according to the system of those geologists, who admit, that all the chains of mountains, volcanic and not volcanic, have been formed by being raised up, as if through crevices.)

In the valleys of Aragua, situate between Caraccas and the town of San Felipe, the commotions were very weak: and La Victoria, Maracay, and Valencia, scarcely suffered at all, notwithstanding their proximity to the capital.

At Valecillo, a few leagues from Valencia, the earth, opening, threw out such an immense quantity of water, that it formed a new torrent.

The same phenomenon took place near Porto-Cabello.

On the other hand, the lake of Maracaybo diminished sensibly.

At Coro no commotion was felt, though the town is situate upon the coast, between other towns which suffered from the earthquake."

Fishermen, who had passed the day of the 26th of March in the island of Orchila, thirty leagues North-East of La Guayra, felt no shock.

These differences, in the direction and propagation of the shock, are probably owing to the peculiar arrangement of the stony strata.

The duration of the earthquake, that is to say, the whole of the movements of undulation and rising (undulacion y trepidacion,) which occasioned the horrible catastrophe of the 26th of March, 1812, was estimated by some at 50", by others at 1' 12"

As far as Villa de Los Remedios, and even to Carthagena.

It is asserted, that in the mountains of Aros, the ground, immediately after the great shocks, was found covered with a very fine and white earth, which appeared to have been projected through crevices.

Apuntamientos sobre las principales Circunstancias del Terremoto de Caracas, por Don Manuel Palacio Fajardo. MS.

Having thus traced the effects of the earthquake to the West of Caraccas, as far as the snowy mountains of Santa Marta, and the table land of Santa Fe de Bogota, we will proceed to consider their action on the country East of the capital.

The commotions were very violent beyond Caurimare, in the valley of Capaya, where they extended as far as the meridian of Cape Codera:

but it is extremely remarkable, that they were very feeble on the coasts of Nueva-Barcelona, Cumana, and Paria; though these coasts are the continuation of the shore of La Guayra, and formerly known to have been often agitated by subterraneous commotions.

Admitting that the destruction of the four towns of Caraccas, La Guayra, San Felipe, and Merida, may be attributed to a volcanic focus placed under or near the island of St. Vincent, it may be conceived, that the motion might have been propagated from North- East to North-West in a line passing through the islands of Los Hermanos, near Blanquilla, without touching the coasts of Araya, Cumana, and Nueva-Barcelona.

This propagation of the shock might even have taken place, without the intermediate points at the surface of the globe, the Hermanos Islands for instance, having felt any commotion.

This phenomenon is frequently remarked at Peru and Mexico, in earthquakes which have followed during ages a determinate direction.

The inhabitants of the Andes say with simplicity, speaking of an intermediary ground, which is not affected by the general motion, "that it forms a bridge" (que hace puente:) as if they meant to indicate by this expression, that the undulations are propagated at an immense depth under an inert rock.

Nearly in a line directed South, 64° west.

Fifteen or eighteen hours after the great catastrophe, the ground remained tranquil.

The night, as we have already observed, was fine and calm; and the commotions did not recommence till after the 27th.

They were then attended with a very loud and long continued subterranean noise (bramido.)

The inhabitants of Caraccas wandered into the country; but the villages and farms having suffered as much as the town, they could find no shelter till they were beyond the mountains of Los Teques, in the valleys of Aragua, and in the Llanos or Savannahs. No less than fifteen oscillations were often felt in one day.

On the 5th of April there was almost as violent an earthquake as that which overthrew the capital.

During several hours the ground was in a state of perpetual undulation.

Large masses of earth fell in the mountains; and enormous rocks were detached from the Silla of Caraccas.

It was even asserted, and this opinion prevails still in the country, that the two domes of the Silla sunk fifty or sixty toises; but this assertion is founded on no measurement whatever.

I am informed, that in the province of Quito also, the people, at every period of great commotions, imagine that the volcano of Tunguragua is diminished in height.--It has been affirmed, in many descriptions published of the destruction of Caraccas, "that the mountain of the Silla is an extinguished volcano; that a great quantity of volcanic substances are found on the road from La Guayra to Caraccas; that the rocks do not present any regular stratification; and that every thing bears the stamp of the action of fire."

It is even added, "that, twelve years before the great catastrophe, Mr. Bonpland and myself, from our physical and mineralogical researches, had considered the Silla as a very dangerous neighbour to the city, because that mountain contained a great quantity of sulphur, and that the commotions must come from the North-East."

It is seldom that natural philosophers have to justify themselves for an accomplished prediction; but I think it my duty to combat ideas that are too easily adopted on the local causes of earthquakes.

See the account given by Mr.

Drouet of Guadaloupe, translated in the Trans. of New York, vol. i. p. 303 The author, in giving to the Silla nine hundred toises of absolute height, has confounded the height of the mountain, in my measurement, above the level of the sea, with its height above the valley of Caracas, which makes a difference of four hundred and sixty toises.