“At Vallecillo, near Valencia, a rivulet spouted out from a hill, which continued to flow for some hours after the earthquake, and which I visited a few days after. The river Guaire, which runs through the valley of Caraccas, was greatly swelled soon after the earthquake, and remained in that state for several days. The water of the bay of Maracaybo withdrew considerably, and it is said that the mountain Avila, which separates Caraccas from Laguaira, sunk several feet into the earth.
“The earthquakes continued for many days, we may say, without interruption: they diminished as it were by degrees, though the last were remarkably strong. So late as the month of October in the same year, there was a violent shock. The earthquake of the 26th March was felt at Santafé de Bogotá, and even at Carthagena, though it was very little felt at Cumana.
“In the following April, a volcano burst out in the island of St. Vincent. About the time of the eruption, a noise like that occasioned by the discharge of a cannon was heard at Caraccas and Laguaira, which caused a general alarm, the inhabitants of each place supposing that the neighbouring town was attacked by the enemy. This roaring noise was distinctly heard where the river Nula falls into the Apure, which is more than 100 leagues from Caraccas. In the same year, 1812, many strong shocks of an earthquake were felt at Samaica and Curaçoa.
“The earthquake of the 26th March alarmed so deeply the inhabitants of Venezuela, that they expected to see the earth open and swallow them at every convulsion; and as it happened on the anniversary of their political revolution, they supposed that event had incurred the displeasure of the Almighty. The clergy, who were enemies to the revolution, as their privileges had been diminished by the new constitution of Venezuela, availed themselves of the disposition of the people, and preached every where against the new republic. Such was the beginning of the civil war at Venezuela; a war, which has desolated those beautiful countries, and which has destroyed the tenth part of their population.”
The celebrated poet Cowper, in the second book of his admirable poem, The Task, has given us a very accurate and sublime description of the effects of Earthquakes, from which the following is an extract:—
The rocks fall headlong, and the valleys rise,
The rivers die into offensive pools,
And, charg’d with putrid verdure, breathe a gross
And mortal nuisance into all the air.
What solid was, by transformation strange,
Grows fluid; and the fixt and rooted earth,
Tormented into billows, heaves and swells,
Or with vortiginous and hideous whirl
Sucks down its prey insatiable. Immense
The tumult and the overthrow, the pangs
And agonies of human and of brute
Multitudes, fugitive on ev’ry side,
And fugitive in vain. The sylvan scene
Migrates uplifted; and, with all its soil,
Alighting on far distant fields, finds out
A new possessor, and survives the change.
Ocean has caught the frenzy, and, upwrought
To an enormous and o’erbearing height,
Not by a mighty wind, but by that voice
Which winds and waves obey, invades the shore
Resistless. Never such a sudden flood,
Upridg’d so high, and sent on such a charge,
Possess’d an inland scene. Where now the throng
That press’d the beach, and, hasty to depart,
Look’d to the sea for safety? They are gone,
Gone with the refluent wave into the deep—
A prince with half his people.
It is a consolation to every good man, to consider that the world is governed by a wise and good, as well as powerful Being, who gives liberty to the powers of nature to range, or restrains them, as may best suit his divine purposes; which have always the ultimate good of the whole creation in view.
CHAP. XLIX.
CURIOSITIES RESPECTING WINDS, HURRICANES, &c.