EARTHQUAKES.

Western Star, Issue 787, 27 October 1883, Page 3

EARTHQUAKES.

[By Mnason.] The recent convulsions from earthquakes,,and from eruptions of vol : canoes, have naturally given rise to much discussion of a geological nature', and in some instances of a religious character, especially amongst persons ■who are continually looking about for “ signs” in the earth and the heavens in harmony with their favorite theory of a “ second coming,” that it may be well to extract accounts of a few of these disturbances in our, globe, passing by the cities of Herculaneum and Pompei, to which our personal expertences of the past few months bear no comparison ; whilst they suggest that great “dissolutions have always marked the world’s history.’ I extract from Dr Hitchcock’s “ Eeligion of Geology,” edit., 1865 : “In the year 17, after Christ, no less than thirteen cities of Asia Minor were overwhelmed in a single night. . . . Pre-eminent on the list of tremendous catastrophes is the city of Antioch. Imagine the inhabitants of that great city, crowded with strangers on a festival occasion, suddenly arrested on a calm day by the earth heaving and rocking beneath their feet; and in a few moments two hundred and fifty thousand of them are buried by falling houses, or the earth opening and swallowing them up. Such was the scene presented in the year 026, and several times before and since that -'period has the like calamity fallen upon it, and twenty, forty, and sixty thousand of its inhabitants have been destroyed at each time. Think of the same ‘destruction that came upon Lisbon in 1755. The sun had just dissipated the fog on a warm, calm morning, when suddenly the subterranean thundering and heaving began, and in six minutes the city was a heap of ruins, and 60,000 of the inhabitants were numbered among the dead. Hundreds had crowded upon a new quay surrounded by vessels. In a minute the earth opened beneath them, and the wharf, the vessels, and the crowd went down into its bosom, the gulf closed, tbe sea rolled over the spot, and no vestige of wharf, vessels, or man ever floated to the surf ace! . . .

Eiecher, who was near, gives a thrilling account of the destruction of. Euphemia in Calabria, a city of about 5000 inhabitants, in the year 1638 “ After some time,” he says, “ the violent faroxysms of the earthquake ceasing, stood up, and turning my eyes to look for Euphemia saw only a frightful black clomd. We waited till it had passed away, when nothing but a dismal and putrid lake was to be seen where the city once stood ! ... In like manner in 1692 did Port Bizal, in the "West Indies, sink beneath the waters, with nearly all its inhabitants. Still more awful, although usually less destructive, is often the scene presented by a volcanic eruption. Let the reader imagine himself, for instance, upon one of the wide elevated plains of Mexico, far from the fear of volcanoes. The earth begins to quake under your feet, and the most alarming subterranean noises admonish you of a mighty power within the earth that must soon have vent. You flee to the surrounding mountains in time to look back and see 10 square miles of the plain swell up, like a bladder, to the height of 500 ft, while the numerous smaller ones rise from the surface still higher, and emit smoke ; and in their midst six mountains are thrown up to the height, some of them at least, of 1000 ft, and pour melted lava, turning rivers out of their course, and spreading terrific desolation over a late

fertile plain, and for ever excluding its formei inhabitants. Such was the .eruption, by which Mount Jorullo, in Mexico, wVs suddenly thrown up in 1759. . . . Still more terriffic have

been some of the eruptions in Iceland. In 1783, earthquakes of tremendous power shook the whole island, and fiames burst forth from the ocean. In June these ceased, and Shaptur Jokul opened its volcanic mouth ; nor, did it close till it had poured forth two streams of lava, one 60 miles long, and 12 miles broad, and the other 40 miles long, and seven broad, and both with an average thickness of lOOtt. During that summer the inhabitants saw the sun no more, and all Europe was covered with a haze. In 1772 around the Payandayang, one of the loftiest mountains in Java, no less than 40 villages were reposing in peace ; and in August of that year a remarkable luminous cloud enveloping the top aroused the inhabitants from their security, but it was too late, for at once the mountain began to sink into the earth, and soon it.had disappeared with the 40 villages, and most of the inhabitants, over a space of 15 miles long, and six broad Still more extra-

ordinary, the most remarkable on record, was an eruption in Sumbawa, one of the Molucca islands. It began on the 3rd of April, and did not cease till July. The explosions were heard in one direction, 970 miles, and in another, 720 miles. So heavy was the fall of ashes at the distance of 40 miles that bouses were crushed and destroyed. The floating cinders in the ocean, hundreds of miles distant, were 2ft thick, and vessels were forced through them with difficulty. The darkness i'h Java, 300 miles distant, was deeper than the blackest night; and, finally, out of the 12,000 inhabitants of the island, only 26 survived the catastrope.” These two latter cases, it will be seen, refer to the very districts in which the frightful catastrophe of last month occurred, the full extent of which desolation we have not yet heard. Our alarmists may well ponder the magnitude of the events of tho past, —“ Launceston Telegraph.”