the dead. Hundreds had crowded upon a new quay surrounded by vessels. In a moment the earth opened beneath them, and the wharf, the vessels, and the crowd went down into its bosom; the gulf closed, the sea rolled over the spot, and no vestige of wharf, vessels, or man ever floated to the surface. How thrilling is the account left us by Kircher, who was near, of the destruction of Euphemia, in Calabria, a city of about five thousand inhabitants, in the year 1638! "After some time," says he, "the violent paroxysm of the earthquake ceasing, I stood up, and, turning my eyes to look for Euphemia, saw only a frightful black cloud. We waited till it had passed away, when nothing but a dismal and putrid lake was to be seen where the city once stood." In like manner did Port Royal, in the West Indies, sink beneath the waters, with nearly all its inhabitants, in less than one minute, in the year 1692. Still more awful, though usually less destructive, is often the scene presented by a volcanic eruption. Imagine yourselves, for instance, upon one of the wide, elevated plains of Mexico, far from the fear of volcanoes. The earth begins to quake under your feet, and the most alarming subterranean noises admonish you of a mighty power within the earth that must soon have vent. You flee to the surrounding mountains in time to look back and see ten square miles of the plain swell up, like a bladder, to the height of five hundred feet, while numerous smaller cones rise from the surface still higher, and emit smoke; and in their midst, six mountains are thrown up to the height, some of them at least, of sixteen hundred feet, and pour forth melted lava, turning rivers out of their course, and spreading terrific desolation over a late fertile plain, and forever excluding its former inhabitants. Such was the eruption, by which Jorullo, in Mexico, was suddenly thrown up, in 1759. Still more terrific have been some of the eruptions in Iceland. In 1783, earthquakes of tremendous power shook the whole island, and flames burst forth from the ocean. In June these ceased, and Skaptar Jokul opened its mouth; nor did it close till it had poured forth two streams of lava, one sixty miles long, twelve miles broad, and the other forty miles long, and seven broad, and both with an average thickness of one hundred feet. During that summer the inhabitants saw the sun no more, and all Europe was covered with a haze. Around the Papandayang, one of the loftiest mountains in Java, no less than forty villages were reposing in peace. But in August, 1772, a remarkable luminous cloud enveloping its top aroused them from their security. But it was too late. For at once the mountain began to sink into the earth, and soon it had disappeared with the forty villages, and most of the inhabitants, over a space fifteen miles long and six broad.