CONTENTS. JOURNEY TO THE EQUINOCTIAL REGIONS OF THE NEW CONTINENT. BOOK V. CHAPTER XIV. Earthquakes at Caraccas. Connection of this phenomenon with the volcanic eruptions of the West India islands. WE left Caraccas on the 7th of February, in the cool of the evening, and began our journey to the Oroonoko. The remembrance of that departure is more painful to us now, than it was some years ago. Our friends have perished in the sanguinary revolutions, which have successively given liberty to those distant regions, and deprived them of it. The house which we inhabited is now a heap of ruins. Tremendous earthquakes have changed the surface of the soil. The city, which I have described, has dis appeared; and on the same spot, on the ground fissured in various directions, another city is slowly rising. Already those heaps of ruins, the grave of a numerous population, are become anew the habitation of men. In retracing changes of so general an interest, I shall be led to notice events, that took place long after my return to Europe. I shall pass over in silence the popular commotions, and the modifications which the state of society has undergone. Modern nations, careful of their own remembrance, snatch from oblivion the history of human revolutions, which is that of ardent passions, and inveterate hatred. It is not the same with respect to the revolutions of the physical world. These are described with the least accuracy, when they happen to coincide with the period of civil dissentions. Earthquakes and the eruptions of volcanoes strike the imagination by the evils, which are their necessary consequence. Tradition seizes in preference whatever is vague and marvellous; and amid great public calamities, as in private misfortunes, man seems to shun that light, which leads us to discover the real causes of events, and recognise the circumstances by which they are attended. I have thought proper to record in this work all I have been able to collect with certainty respecting the earthquake of the 26th of March, 1812, which destroyed the town of Caraccas; and by which more than twenty thousand persons perished almost at the same instant in the province of Venezuela. The intercourse which I have kept up with persons of all classes has enabled me, to compare the description of many eyewitnesses, and to interrogate them on objects, that may throw light on physical science in general. The traveller, being the historian of nature, should authenticate the dates of great catastrophes, examine their connection and mutual relations, and mark in the rapid course of ages, in this continual progress of successive changes, those fixed points, with which other catastrophes may one day be compared. All epochas approach each other in the immensity of time comprehended in the history of nature. Years passed away seem but a few instants; and if the physical descriptions of a country do not excite a very powerful and general interest, they have at least the advantage of never becoming old. Similar considerations, no doubt, led Mr. de la Condamine to describe in his Voyage à l'Equateur, the memorable eruptions of the volcano of Cotopaxi, which took place long after his departure from Quito. Following the example of this celebrated traveller, I think I shall the less deserve blame, as the events which I am Those of the 30th of November 1744, and of the 3d of September 1750. (Introd. Hist., p. 156, and 160.) going to relate will serve to elucidate the theory of volcanic reactions, or the influence of a system of volcanoes on a vast space of circumjacent country. At the time that Mr. Bonpland and myself inhabited the provinces of New Andalusia, NuevaBarcelona, and Caraccas, a general opinion prevailed, that the easternmost parts of these coasts were the most exposed to the destructive effects of earthquakes. The inhabitants of Cumana dreaded the valley of Caraccas, on account of its damp and variable climate, and its gloomy and foggy sky; while the inhabitants of that temperate valley considered Cumana as a town, where only a burning air was breathed, and where the soil is periodically agitated by violent commotions. Forgetful of the overthrow of Riobamba, and other very elevated towns; ignorant that the peninsula of Araya, composed of mica-slate, has partaken of the commotions of the calcareous coast of Cumana; well-informed persons thought they perceived motives of security in the structure of the primitive rocks of Caraccas, as well as in the elevated situation of this valley. Religious ceremonies celebrated at La Guayra, and even in the capital, in the middle of the night*, recalled no doubt to their memory, For instance, the nocturnal procession of the 21st of October, instituted in commemoration of the great earth |