Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1Humboldt, Alexander von
History
Cosmos: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1
Humboldt, Alexander von
Astronomy; Cosmography; Physical geography; Science -- History
Remote springs were interrupted in their flow, a phenomenon attending
earthquakes which had been noticed among the ancients by Demetrius the
Callatian. The hot springs of Toplitz dried up, and returned, inundating
every thing around, and having their waters colored with iron ocher. In
Cadiz
p 211
the sea rose to an elevation of sixty-four feet, while in the Antilles,
where the tide usually rises only from twenty-six to twenty-eight inches, it
suddenly rose above twenty feet, the water being of an inky blackness. It
has been computed that on the 1st of November, 1755, a portion of the
Earth's surface four times greater than that of Europe, was simultaneously
shaken. As yet there is no manifestation of force known to us, including
even the murderous inventions of our own race, by which a greater number of
people have been killed in the short space of a few minutes: sixty thousand
were destroyed in Sicily in 1693, from thirty to forty thousand in the
earthquake of Riobamba in 1797, and probably five times as many in Asia
Minor and Syria, under Tiberius and Justinian the elder, about the years 19
and 526.
There are instances in which the earth has been shaken for many successive
days in the chain of the Andes in South America, but I am only acquainted
with the following cases in which shocks that have been felt almost every
hour for months together have occurred far from any volcano, as, for
instance, on the eastern declivity of the Alpine chain of Mount Cenis, at
Fenestrelles and Pignerol, from April, 1808; between New Madrid and Little
Prairie,* north of Cincinnati in the United States of America, in December,
1811, as well as through the whole winter of 1812; and in the Pachalik of
Aleppo, in the months of August and September, 1822.
[footnote] *Drake, 'Nat. and Statist. View of Cincinnati', p. 232-238;
Mitchell, in the 'Transactions of the Lit. and Philos. Soc. of New York',
vol. i., p. 281-308. In the Piedmonese county of Pignerol, glasses of
water, filled to the very brim, exhibited for hours a continuous motion.
As the mass of the people are seldom able to rise to general views, and are
consequently always disposed to ascribe great phenomena to local telluric
and atmospheric processes, wherever the shaking of the earth is continued
for a long time, fears of the eruption of a new volcano are awakened. In
some few cases, this apprehension has certainly proved to be well grounded,
as, for instance, in the sudden elevation of volcanic islands, and as we see
in the elevation of the volcano of Jorullo, a mountain elevated 1684 feet
above the ancient level of the neighboring plain, on the 29th of September
1759, after ninety days of earthquake and subterranean thunder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account