“Earthquakes, Nature’s agonizing pangs, Oft shake th’ astonish’d isles;--the Solfaterre Or sends forth thick, blue, suffocating streams, Or shoots to temporary flame. A din Wild through the mountains’ quivering rocky caves, Like the dread crash of tumbling planets, roars. When tremble thus the pillars of the globe, Like the tall cocoa by the fierce north blown, Can the poor brittle tenements of man Withstand the dread convulsion? Their dear homes (Which, shaking, tottering, crashing, bursting, fall) The boldest fly; and on the open plain Appall’d, in agony the moment wait When, with disrupture vast, the waving earth Shall ‘whelm them in her sea-disgorging womb. Nor less affrighted are the bestial kind: The bold steed quivers in each panting vein, And staggers bathed in deluges of sweat; The lowing herds forsake their grassy food, And send forth frighted, woeful, hollow sounds; The dog, thy trusty sentinel of night, Deserts his post assign’d, and piteous howls. Wide ocean feels The mountain waves, passing their custom’d bounds, Make direful, loud incursions on the land, All-overwhelming: sudden they retreat, With their whole troubled waters; but anon Sudden return, with louder, mightier force. The black rocks whiten, the vex’d shores resound; And yet more rapid, distant they retire. Vast coruscations lighten all the sky With volumed flames; while thunder’s voice From forth his shrine, by night and horror girt, Astounds the guilty, and appals the good.” The great events to which we allude began, in the year 1333, first in China. Here parching drought, succeeded by famine, laid waste the tract of country watered by the rivers Kiang and Hoai. Rain, about this period, fell in torrents in and about Kingsai, destroying, it is said, by the floods more than 400,000 persons. The mountain Tsincheou, in falling, formed vast chasms in the earth. About this time, according to the diary of Ramon Vila, there were experienced dire famine and pestilence at Barcelona, which in a very short time carried off 10,000 persons.