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 |