EARTHQUAKE AT LISBON.
for at the expense of the State. Several lighter shocks were felt in the succeeding two months. At the end of three months the Government began to rebuild the town. In fifteen years it was well restored, and to-day is one of the handsomest in Europe.
The immense area over which this earthquake was felt is very remarkable; for not only was every part of Spain and Portugal convulsed, but the shocks were perceived, with greater or less intensity, in England, Holland, Italy, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Corsica, the West Indies, at Morocco and Algiers in Africa, and in a part of South America. At Algiers the shock was so violent as to throw down many buildings; and an oasis, with all its population, not far from Morocco, was swallowed up. Fez and Mesquinez were destroyed, with fifteen thousand people. The town of Setubal, seventeen miles from the Tagus and twenty-two miles southeast of Lisbon, was almost entirely swallowed up. The shock was almost as severe at Oporto as at Lisbon. The premonitory roar was compared to the rattling of many carriages over a rough road. The loftiest mountains were shaken, and many cleft or shattered. Masses of rock tumbled from the crags into the valleys. At Colares, seventeen miles from Lisbon, flames and smoke were seen to burst from the Alviras, and also out of the sea. These phenomena continued for some days. A chasm fifteen miles long opened in the Pyrenees. Towns were seriously damaged in Switzerland, France and Italy. Vesuvius, in a state of eruption for a period, suddenly ceased. The shock was also felt by ships far at sea, and, in several instances, the concussion was such as to make the people suppose their vessels had struck on a rock. In one instance, it is said that the people on board a vessel off the West Indies were thrown up a foot and a half from the deck. This circumstance may be
RUINED CATHEDRAL, LISBON.