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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But If This Feeling Seemed To Calm The Passions Of Some,
And Open The Heart To Pity, It Had A Contrary Effect On Others,
Rendering Them More Rigorous And Inhuman.
In great calamities
vulgar minds evince less of goodness than of energy.
Misfortune
acts in the same manner as the pursuits of literature and the study
of nature; the happy influence of which is felt only by a few,
giving more ardour to sentiment, more elevation to the thoughts,
and increased benevolence to the disposition.
Shocks as violent as those which in about the space of a minute*
overthrew the city of Caracas, could not be confined to a small
portion of the continent. (* The duration of the earthquake, that
is to say the whole of the movements of undulation and rising
(undulacion y trepidacion), which occasioned the horrible
catastrophe of the 26th of March, 1812, was estimated by some at 50
seconds, by others at 1 minute 12 seconds.) Their fatal effects
extended as far as the provinces of Venezuela, Varinas, and
Maracaibo, along the coast; and especially to the inland mountains.
La Guayra, Mayquetia, Antimano, Baruta, La Vega, San Felipe, and
Merida, were almost entirely destroyed. The number of the dead
exceeded four or five thousand at La Guayra, and at the town of San
Felipe, near the copper-mines of Aroa. It would appear that on a
line running east-north-east and west-south-west from La Guayra and
Caracas to the lofty mountains of Niquitao and Merida, the violence
of the earthquake was principally directed.
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