Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Persons Who Have Lived Long In New
Andalusia, Or In The Low Regions Of Peru, Will Admit That The
Period Most To Be Dreaded For The Frequency Of Earthquakes Is The
Beginning Of The Rainy Season, Which, However, Is Also The Season
Of Thunder-Storms.
The atmosphere and the state of the surface of
the globe seem to exercise an influence unknown to us
On the
changes which take place at great depths; and I am inclined to
think that the connection which it is supposed has been traced
between the absence of thunder-storms and the frequency of
earthquakes, is rather a physical hypothesis framed by the
half-learned of the country than the result of long experience. The
coincidence of certain phenomena may be favoured by chance. The
extraordinary commotions felt almost continually during the space
of two years on the banks of the Mississippi and the Ohio, and
which corresponded in 1812 with those of the valley of Caracas,
were preceded at Louisiana by a year almost exempt from
thunder-storms. The public mind was again struck with this
phenomenon. We cannot be surprised that there should be in the
native land of Franklin a great readiness to receive explanations
founded on the theory of electricity.
The shock felt at Caracas in the month of December 1811, was the
only one which preceded the terrible catastrophe of the 26th of
March, 1812. The inhabitants of Terra Firma were alike ignorant of
the agitations of the volcano in the island of St. Vincent, and of
those felt in the basin of the Mississippi, where, on the 7th and
8th of February, 1812, the earth was day and night in perpetual
oscillation.
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