The Wonder Book of Volcanoes and EarthquakesHouston, Edwin J. (Edwin James)
Science
The Wonder Book of Volcanoes and Earthquakes
Houston, Edwin J. (Edwin James)
Earthquakes; Volcanoes
"All agreed that every shock seemed to come with a rumbling
noise from the westward, beginning with the horizontal and
ending with the vorticose (rotary) motion."
According to Dolomieu, during the Lisbon earthquake, the shocks were
preceded "by a loud subterranean noise like thunder, which was renewed
for every shock.... This great shock," he says, referring to one of
the great upward shocks, "occurred without the prelude of any slight
shocks, without any notice whatever as suddenly as the blowing up of
a mine.... Some, however, pretend that a muffled interior noise was
heard almost at the same moment."
The noises do not generally continue long after the earthquake shocks.
In some cases, however, a very loud noise is heard at intervals for a
considerable length of time after the principal shock. This was the
case at Quito and Ibarra, in which a great noise was heard for from
eighteen to twenty minutes after the principal shock. In a similar
manner during the earthquake of October, 1746, at Lima, and Callao,
South America, peals of underground thunder were heard at Truxillo
for fifteen minutes after the principal shock. In such cases it
seems probable that the noises were not caused by the same impulses
that caused the original shock, but by the forces that caused the
subsequent shock.
Humboldt relates that in 1784 there were noises heard at Guanajuato,
from the 9th to the 12th of February. They were not, however, followed
by an earthquake.
Humboldt also states that in an earthquake which occurred on the 30th
of April, 1812, on the banks of the Orinoco River, in South America,
a loud thundering noise was heard, without, however, any shock, but
at this time a volcano on the island of St. Vincent, in the Lesser
Antilles, although some 632 miles to the northeast, was pouring out
streams of lava. Again in the great eruption of Cotopaxi, in 1734,
underground noises were heard as if cannon were being fired. These
sounds were distinctly heard at as great a distance as Honda on the
banks of the Magdalena River. Now, bearing in mind that the crater of
Cotopaxi is situated on the high plateau of Quito, in a region full
of valleys and fissures, it would seem that for the sounds to have
been sent through the 436 miles between the mountains and the valley
of the Magdalena River, the waves must, for the greater part, have
been transmitted through the solid earth at some considerable distance
below the surface.
Mallet states that the underground noises which continued for more
than a month from the midnight of January 9th, 1784, at Guanajuato,
were not followed by any earthquake shocks, that it was if as thunder
clouds occupied the space below the surface at that part of the earth
and from these clouds there came the slow rolling sounds like short,
quick, snaps of thunder.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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