JUNE, 1847.

EARTHQUAKES.

Before we quit this great phenomenon, which has been considered not so much in its individual, as in its general, physical, and geognostical relations, we must advert to the cause of the indescribable, deep, and quite peculiar impression which the first earthquake we experience makes upon us, even when it is unaccompanied by subterranean noises.

The impression here is not, I believe, the consequence of any recollection of destructive catastrophes presented to our imagination by narratives of historical events: what seizes upon us so wonderfully is the disabuse of that innate faith in the fixity of the solid and sure-set foundations of the earth.

From early childhood we are habituated to the contrast between the mobile element, water, and the immobility of the soil on which we stand.

All the evidences of our senses have confirmed this belief.

But when suddenly the ground begins to rock beneath us, the feeling of an unknown, mysterious power in nature coming into action, and shaking the solid globe, arises in the mind.

The illusion of the whole of our earlier life is annihilated in an instant.

We are undeceived as to the repose of nature; we feel ourselves transported to the realm, and made subject to the empire, of destructive unknown powers.

Every sound, the slightest rustle in the air, sets attention on the stretch.

We no longer trust the earth upon which we stand.

The unusual in the phenomenon throws the same anxious unrest and alarm over the lower animals.

Swine and dogs are particularly affected by it; and the very crocodiles of the Orinoco, otherwise as dumb as our little lizards, leave the shaken bed of the stream, and run bellowing into the woods.

To man, the earthquake presents itself as an all-pervading unlimited something.

We can remove from an active crater; from the stream of lava that is pouring down upon our dwelling we can escape; with the earthquake we feel that whithersoever we fly we are still on the hearth of destruction.

Such a mental condition, though evoked in our very innermost nature, is not, however, of long duration.

When a series of lighter shocks occur in a district one after another, every trace of alarm soon vanishes among the inhabitants.

On the rainless coasts of Peru, nothing is known of hail, nor of explosions of lightning and rolling thunder in the bosom of the atmosphere.

The subterraneous noise that accompanies the earthquake, comes in lieu of the thunder of the clouds.

Use and wont for a series of years, and the very prevalent opinion that dangerous earthquakes are only to be apprehended two or three times in the course of a century, lead the inhabitants of Lima scarcely to think more of a slight shock of an earthquake than is thought of a hail-storm in the temperate zone. --

Cosmos: a Survey of the General Physical History of the Universe.

By Alexander von Humboldt.