hazy; the sun presented an inflamed appearance; and, though not a breeze was stirring, the waters of the ocean were unusually troubled. The earthquakes began about one o'clock. Our limits do not permit us to speak of them in detail. Five shocks of the most tremendous violence, and accompanied with horrors altogether indescribable, took place during the months of February and March. In the course of 1783 and the three following years, these were succeeded by upwards of twelve hundred other shocks, slighter, indeed, in degree, yet, many of them marked with great violence and followed by terrible destruction.

The stupendous and melancholy result of the whole was, an entire change in the face of a tract of country upwards of four hundred miles in circumference. Whole plains were sunk, mountains were leveled, valleys filled up, and rivers forced from their ancient channels. Two hundred and fifteen new lakes were formed, one hundred and eighty-two towns and villages utterly destroyed, and ninety-two others so materially injured as to be rendered uninhabitable. Two entire farms were removed to a considerable distance from their original situation. A husbandman who was ploughing in his field with a pair of oxen, near to the town of Oppido, was suddenly transported with his land and team from one side of a ravine to the other, and neither he nor his oxen materially injured. The number of human lives destroyed could never be satisfactorily ascertained. The most probable estimate appears to have been about forty thousand. Even at the present period, after a lapse of nearly thirty years, Calabria still feels and manifests the effects of this disaster.

The late earthquake in the United States deserves to be noticed on the present occasion. Although not, perhaps, so severe as either of those of which we have just spoken, it was, notwithstanding, sufficiently violent, in several places, to have reduced to a ruin the most substantial buildings. Had it assailed Philadelphia or Newyork with the same force which it manifested along the banks of the Mississippi, the destruction, we apprehend, would have been but little inferior to that of Lisbon. It began on Monday the 16th of December 1811.

"Precisely at two o'clock in the morning, says Mr. Pierce, whose interesting narrative we copy, we were all alarmed by the violent and convulsive agita

tion of the boats (on the Mississippi) accompanied by a noise similar to that which would have been produced by running over a sand-bar. Every man was immediately rosed and rushed upon deck. We were at this time moored to the bank of the river. Ignorant, at first, of the cause of such a concussion, the idea of an earthquake at length entered my mind; and this idea was confir med by a second shock, and two others in immediate succession. These con. tinued for the space of eight minutes. So complete and general had been the convulsion, that a tremulous motion was communicated to the leaves on the surface of the ground. A few yards from the spot where we lay, the body of a large tree was snapped in two, and the falling part precipitated to the margin of the river. The trees in the forest shook like rushes: the alarming clattering of their branches may be compared to the effect of a severe wind passing through a cane-brake.

"At the dawn of the day I went on shore to examine the effects of the shocks. The earth, about twenty feet from the water's edge, was deeply cracked; but no visible injury of moment had been yet sustained. Fearing, however, to remain longer where we were, it was thought most advisable to leave our landing as expeditiously as possible; this was immediately done. At a few rods distance from the shore, we experienced a fifth shock more severe than either of the preceding. I had expected this from the lowering appearances of the weather. It was, indeed, most providential that we had started; for such was the strength of this last shock, that the bank, to which we were, but a few minutes since, attached, was rent and fell into the river; whilst the trees rushed from the forest, precipitating themselves into the water, with force sufficient to have dashed us into a thousand atoms.

"It was now light; and we had an opportunity of beholding, in full extent, all the horrors of our situation. During the first four shocks, tremendous and uninterrupted explosions, resembling a discharge of artillery, were heard from the opposite shore. At that time I had imputed them to the falling of the river's banks. This fifth shock explained the real cause. Wherever the veins of the earthquake ran, there was a volcanic discharge of combustible matter to great heights, an incessant rumbling was heard below, and the bed of the river was excessively agitated, whilst the water assumed a turbid and boiling appearance. Near our boat, a spout of confined air, breaking its way through the waters, burst forth, and, with a loud report, discharged mud, sticks, &c. from the river's bed, at least thirty feet above its surface. These spoutings were frequent, and, in many places, appeared to rise to the very heavens. Large trees, that had lain for ages at the bottom of the river, were shot up in thousands of instances, some with their roots uppermost and their tops planted; others were hurled into the air; many again were only loosened and floated upon the surface. Never was a scene more replete with terrific threatenings of death. Here, the earth, river, &c. torn with furious convulsions, opened in huge trenches, whose deep jaws were instantaneously closed; there, through a thousand vents,

sulphurous steams gushed from its very bowels, leaving vast and almost unfath omable caverns. Every where nature itself seemed tottering on the very verge of dissolution.

"During the day there was, with very little intermission, a continued series of shocks, attended with innumerable explosions, like the rolling of thunder. The bed of the river was incessantly disturbed; and the water boiled severely in every part. Our ears were incessantly assailed with the crashing of timber: the banks were crushed down, and fell with all their growth into the water. It was no less astonishing than alarming to behold the oldest trees of the forest, whose firm roots had withstood a thousand storms, and weathered the sternest tempests, quivering and shaking with the violence of the shocks, whilst their heads were whipped together with a quick and rapid motion.

"Many small islands have been already annihilated, and from appearances, many more must suffer the same fate. To one of these I ventured in a skiff; but it was impossible to examine it; for the ground sunk from my tread, and the least force applied to any part of it seemed to shake the whole.

"On Wednesday afternoon I visited an island which was extensive and partially covered with willows. The earthquake had rent the ground in large and numerous gaps; vast quantities of burnt wood, in every stage of alteration, from its primitive nature to stone coal, had been spread over the ground to very considerable distances; frightful and hideons caverns yawned on every side; and the earth's bowels appeared to have felt the tremendous force of the shocks which had thus riven its surface. I was gratified with seeing several places where those spouts, which had so much attracted our wo der and admiration, had arisen. They were generally on the beach, and have left large circular holes in the sand, formed much like a funnel."

After exhibiting a view equally picturesque and melancholy, of the dismal scenes of devastation which the shores of the river presented, Mr. Pierce gives a table or rather diary of the shocks, setting forth their number, and the order of time in which they occurred. From this it appears, that, in the space of three days, they amounted to no less than eighty nine, many of them marked with extreme violence.

Thus far we have proceeded on solid ground, with the light of observation and the truth of faithful history for our guide. We must now, however, descend into more precarious, dark and intricate ways, in search of the origin and cause of earthquakes. "Hic labor, hoc opus est," with this begins our labour and difficulty.

At a very early period in the history of science, philosophers began to speculate and frame conjectures as to the cause of earthquakes. The subject being such as to afford great scope for the exercise of the imagination, hypothesis after hypothesis sprang up in relation to it with unbounded luxuriance. A hasty view of a few of these may contribute to the momentary amusement of our readers.

By Anaxagoras and his followers, the body of the earth was supposed to be filled with vast caverns, similar in their form to what we denominate, in common language, the "vault of heaven" and not much less extensive in their dimensions. Within these subterranean cavities he believed that clouds were formed analo. gous to those that glide through the atmosphere. The bursting of the lightning from these clouds beneath our feet, he regarded as the immediate cause of earthquakes.

Another sect of philosophers contended, that the caverns, in question, contained vast bodies of subterranean fire. These fires, by their constant action, weakened the walls of the caverns enclosing them, which ultimately fell in, and thus produced the concussions of an earthquake.

Epicurus and other philosophers of the peripatetic school attributed earthquakes to explosions produced by the ignition of certain inflammable gases, imprisoned or engendered in the bowels of the earth.

The sudden conversion of water into steam by the violent action of subterranean fires, has been long regarded as the cause of earthquakes. This hypothesis has numbered among its advocates some of the most distinguished characters of modern times. Gassendus, Kircher, Schottus, Varenius, Des Cartes, Du Hamel, and Honorius gave it all the support of their talents and authority. Fabri, Dr. Woodward, and the late Dr. Darwin were zealous in defence of different modifications of the same hypothesis.

The stupendous machinery by which these philosophers contrived to bring large bodies of fire and water together in the bowels of the earth-bodies large enough to propagate concus. sions throughout a great portion of the globe, the limits of this article will not suffer us to describe. The whole apparatus ap. pears to be nothing but a mere creature of the imagination. As far

as we now recollect, subterranean geography furnishes not a single fact in favour of its existence. On the other hand, the whole amount of our knowledge in that science, is unfavourable to the notion of deep-seated caverns and central fires. Artificial excavations have been carried nearly two thousand feet into the bowels of the earth-a distance, perhaps, as deep as the seat of earthquakes-yet none of these subterranean caverns have been found. Nor have any discoveries been made which do not tend to a refutation rather than a confirmation of our belief in the existence of internal fires. After descending to the distance of a few hundred feet beneath the surface of the earth, the temperature begins gradually to decline as you advance towards the centre. It is scarcely necessary to add, that the reverse of this would be true, were you still approaching nearer to vast masses of ignited materials. It is, moreover, a well known fact, that the water at the bottom of the ocean, where the depth extends to several hundred fathoms, is much colder than it is either at the surface, or at any intermediate depth between the two extremes. This cirumstance tends also, we think, to prove, that there is no general source of heat situated deep in the bowels of the earth. The existence of subterranean fires in volcanic regions has no bearing whatever on the main question. If, in other portions of the globe internal fires do occasionally exist, we are inclined to believe that they are only of temporary duration, and are kindled up at the time by the action of electricity on combustible materials. We regret that without trespassing greatly on the limits assigned us, we cannot discuss this subject at large. Were the case otherwise, it would, we think, be no difficult task to assign reasons altogether unanswerable against that hypothesis which deduces earthquakes from the action of subterranean fire and water. Were these phenomena produced by the mere impetus of imprisoned steam, that agent would, on the opening of the earth, rush out in such immense quantities and so visible a form, as to establish the fact to the entire satisfaction of every beholder.

The last hypothesis to which we shall invite the attention of our readers, is that which attributes earthquakes to the influence