Finally, all the disasters of this sort, in both England and the United States, so far as all historic records go, do not equal a single one of the many terrible convulsions recorded in the history of other nations. From the earliest times to the present, we find a constant succession of appalling disasters, many of which are almost beyond the power of comprehension. The most cursory glance at these horrors of the past should render every Anglo-Saxon peculiarly grateful that his lot is not cast in a land so cursed with terrors, and more ready to sympathize with the stranger in his woe.
CHAPTER XXVI.
EARTHQUAKES IN TROPICAL AMERICA.
“Hark! louder on the blast come hollow shrieks
Of dissolution; in the fitful scowl
Of night, near and more near, angels of death
Incessant flap their deadly wings, and roar
Through all the fevered air: the mountains rock
And thousand meteors flame about their heads;
The thunder long and loud gives out his voice,
Responsive to the ocean’s troubled growl,
While bellowing chasms rend th’ eternal hills.
Earth trembles at the mighty march of death.”
HE reader will be assured, from the facts given concerning volcanic eruptions, and the earthquakes of Asia Minor mentioned in the former chapter, that great earthquakes are as numerous in Asiatic districts as elsewhere; but beyond the bare fact, little is known of most of these. India has preserved no written history: and China and Japan have been till recently almost inaccessible to Europeans. So while the disturbances there are equal in importance to those of other lands, it is but lately that any definite information has been accessible; and our chief knowledge has come from personal narratives of white settlers and visitors to the islands of the western Pacific. In Japan, there is, to say nothing of numerous volcanoes, strong circumstantial evidence of the frequency of earthquakes in days past. Almost all dwellings are constructed of bamboo and lightest woods, one story high, with screens of paper as partitions: houses of stone are feared, the people preferring to take their chances on a great fire than on an earthquake. The same fact is noticeable
EARTHQUAKE IN CHINA.