What are Earthquakes?
Shakings or vibrations of the ground; sometimes accompanied by rents, and rockings or heavings of the surface, so as to overthrow buildings, and swallow up towns and large tracts of country. They are attended with a terrible subterranean noise, like thunder, and sometimes with an eruption of fire or water, or else of smoke or winds.
Subterranean, underground.
What is supposed to cause them?
An electrical action between the atmosphere and some deep sub-strata; or the sudden formation of gaseous matter beneath the surface of the earth by internal volcanic fires. Many hot countries, where much electrical disturbance takes place, are very subject to them: earthquakes almost always precede volcanic eruptions; an open volcano, also, probably diminishes the force of earthquakes, by the vent which it affords. Earthquakes, at different times, have been productive of the most terrific effects: towns and cities have been swallowed up, and thousands of people destroyed by them. The island of Jamaica is remarkable for the earthquakes which frequently happen there.
Precede, to go before.
Vent, opening.
Terrific, full of terror, dreadful.
Where is Jamaica situated?
In the West Indies,—a large group of fertile islands which lie between North and South America. Jamaica is the principal one of those which belong to the English.