The fundamental formations throughout Colombia are igneous and metamorphic, the great mass of the cordilleras consisting of gneiss, granite, porphyry and basalt. In many places the carboniferous strata have attained considerable development, though they have been thrown into strange confusion by some unknown disturbance. [16] The writer in _Chamber's Encyclopedia_, in speaking of Colombia, also says: The geology of the country is very extraordinary. "Everywhere," we are told, "are found traces of stupendous cataclysms and a disarrangement and intermixture of primitive and sedimentary rocks, which assume to put all classification at defiance." [17] Professor Winchell says: We are in the midst of great changes, and are scarcely conscious of it. We have seen worlds in flames, and have felt a comet strike the earth. We have seen the whole coast of South America lifted up bodily ten or fifteen feet and let down again in an hour. We have seen the Andes sink 220 feet in seventy years. * * * Vast transpositions have taken place in the coastline of China. The ancient capital, located, in all probability, in an accessible position near the centre of the empire, has now become nearly surrounded by water, and its site is on the peninsula of Corea. * * * There was a time when the rocky barriers of the Thracian Bosphorus gave way and the Black Sea subsided. It had covered a vast area in the north and east. Now this area became drained and was known as the ancient Lectonia: it is now the prairie region of Russia, and the granary of Europe. [18] Referring to Donnelly again: The earthquake of 1783 in Iceland destroyed 9,000 people out of a population of 50,000; twenty villages were consumed by fire or inundated by water, and a mass of lava thrown out "greater than the bulk of Mont Blanc." [19] Professor Lyell, referring to the great earthquake which occurred on the island of Java, near the mountain of Galung Gung, on the 8th of October, 1822, says: