De Lima
page 67. Four of these remarkable catastrophes, with their dates,
may be here enumerated.)
TABLE OF FOUR CATASTROPHES:
COLUMN 1 : MEXICO. (Latitude 13 degrees 32 minutes north.)
COLUMN 2 : PERU. (Latitude 12 degrees 2 minutes south.)
30th of November, 1577 : 17th of June, 1578.
4th of March, 1679 : 17th of June, 1678.
12th of February, 1689 : 10th of October, 1688.
27th of September, 1717 : 8th of February, 1716.
When the shocks are not simultaneous, or do not follow each other
at short intervals, great doubts may be entertained with respect to
the supposed communication of the movement.)
Several facts tend to prove that the causes which produce
earthquakes have a near connection with those which act in volcanic
eruptions. The connection of these causes was known to the
ancients, and it excited fresh attention at the period of the
discovery of America. The discovery of the New World not only
offered new productions to the curiosity of man, it also extended
the then existing stock of knowledge respecting physical geography,
the varieties of the human species, and the migrations of nations.
It is impossible to read the narratives of early Spanish
travellers, especially that of the Jesuit Acosta, without
perceiving the influence which the aspect of a great continent, the
study of extraordinary appearances of nature, and intercourse with
men of different races, must have exercised on the progress of
knowledge in Europe. The germ of a great number of physical truths
is found in the works of the sixteenth century; and that germ would
have fructified, had it not been crushed by fanaticism and
superstition. We learned, at Pasto, that the column of black and
thick smoke, which, in 1797, issued for several months from the
volcano near that shore, disappeared at the very hour, when, sixty
leagues to the south, the towns of Riobamba, Hambato, and Tacunga
were destroyed by an enormous shock. In the interior of a burning
crater, near those hillocks formed by ejections of scoriae and
ashes, the motion of the ground is felt several seconds before each
partial eruption takes place. We observed this phenomenon at
Vesuvius in 1805, while the mountain threw out incandescent
scoriae; we were witnesses of it in 1802, on the brink of the
immense crater of Pichincha, from which, nevertheless, at that
time, clouds of sulphureous acid vapours only issued.
Everything in earthquakes seems to indicate the action of elastic
fluids seeking an outlet to diffuse themselves in the atmosphere.
Often, on the coasts of the Pacific, the action is almost
instantaneously communicated from Chile to the gulf of Guayaquil, a
distance of six hundred leagues; and, what is very remarkable, the
shocks appear to be the stronger in proportion as the country is
distant from burning volcanoes.
