[Ibarra.]

This northern province of Imbabura was the focus of the late terrible earthquake. At half past one on Sunday morning, August 16, 1868, with scarcely a premonitory sign (save a slight trembling at 3 P.M. the previous day), there was an upheaving of the ground, and then one tremendous shock and rocking of the earth, lasting one minute. In that brief moment the rich and flourishing province became a wilderness, and "Misericordia!" went up, like tho sound of many waters, from ten villages and cities. Otovalo, Ibarra, Cotocachí, and Atantaqui are heaps of ruins. At Otovalo 6000 perished. After the first shock, not a wall a yard high remained. Houses, in some instances, seemed to have been cut from their foundation, and thrown ten feet distant. The large stone fountain in the Plaza was thrown many yards. The cotton factory, which was built on the edge of a ravine, was by one stroke reduced to fragments. Such was the force of the concussion, the looms smashed each other, the carding-machines were thrown on their sides, and the roof, with part of the machinery, was found in the river below. The proprietor was killed. Throughout this whole region roads were broken up, and vast chasms created crossing the country in all directions. One is 2000 yards long, 500 yards broad, and 80 yards deep. Large fissures were opened on the sides of Cotocachí and Imbabura, from which issued immense torrents of water, mud, and bituminous substances, carrying away and drowning hundreds of cattle. A caravan of mules going to Chillo with cotton-bales was found four days after grazing on a narrow strip of land, on each side of which was a fearful chasm, while the muleteers were killed.

At Quito comparatively little damage was done. Fifteen lives were lost, and the churches, convents, and many private houses are in a state of dilapidation. Domes and arches, which are much used because of the scarcity of timber, were first to fall.

In the fierceness of the shock, and the extent of the territory shaken, the earthquake of August, 1868, is without a parallel in the New World. The destruction of life (50,000 officially reported in Ecuador alone) has not been equaled in any other earthquake during this century. The tremor was felt over four republics, and from the Andes to the Sandwich Islands. The water-wave was felt on the coast of New Zealand sixteen hours after it had set a United States gunboat, on the sand-hills of Arica. In some respects it is surpassed only by the Lisbon earthquake, which reached from Sweden to the West Indies, and from Barbary to Scotland. The loss of property seems to have been greatest in Peru, and the loss of life greatest in Ecuador. The commotion seemed to be most violent along the Western Cordillera, though it was felt even on the Napo.

There are few places where the crust of our planet is long at rest. Brazil, Egypt, Russia, and Greenland are comparatively free from earthquakes. But had we delicate instruments scattered throughout the world, upheaval and subsidence would doubtless be detected in every part of the so-called terra firma. The sea, and not the land, is the true image of stability.

"Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure brow:
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."

Earthquakes have occurred in every period of geological history, and are independent of latitude. The first well-known earthquake came in the year 63, and shattered Pompeii and Herculaneum sixteen years before they were overwhelmed by the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius. The most celebrated earthquake, and perhaps the most terrible manifestation of force during the human period, was in 1755. The shock, which seemed to originate in the bed of the Atlantic, pervaded one twelfth of the earth's surface. Unhappy Lisbon stood in its path.

An earthquake is a vertical vibration, having an undulatory progression. An example of the simple bounding movement occurred in 1797, when the city of Riobamba, in the Quito Valley, was buried under part of a mountain shaken down by the violent concussion, and men were tossed several hundred feet. We saw one massive structure which had nearly turned a somersault. The ordinary vibrations seldom exceed two feet in height. The wave-movement has a rate of from twenty to thirty miles a minute, depending on the elasticity of the rock and the elevations on the surface. When two undulations cross each other, a rotatory or twisting motion is produced. The waves are generally transmitted along the lines of primary mountain chains, which are doubtless seated on a fracture. The Lisbon waves moved from southwest to northeast, or parallel to the mountain system of the Old World; those of the United States, in 1843, ran parallel to the volcanic chain in Mexico. In South America they roll along the Andes. That of 1797 left its tracks along a westerly line from Tunguragua through Peliléo and Guáno. It is a little singular, that while the late trembling at Quito seemed to come from the north, the great shock in Peru preceded that in Ecuador by three days. Though the origin of earthquakes is deep-seated, the oscillation is mostly superficial, as deep mines are little disturbed. The most damage is done where the sedimentary plains abut against the hard, upturned strata of the mountains. The shock is usually brief. That of Caracas lasted fifty seconds, that of Lisbon six minutes; but Humboldt witnessed one in South America which continued a quarter of an hour.