from an English eye-witness carries the number to sixty thousand. A conflagration instantly ensued, which in three days reduced the remainder of the city to a heap of cinders. The shock agitated the whole kingdom of Portugal, particularly the sea-coast; and Faro, St. Ube's, and other large towns, are represented as having suffered equally with the capital*.

On May 22d, 1782, the island of Formosa, in the Pacific ocean, was nearly overwhelmed, by an immense inundation of the sea, attributed to an earthquake. Numerous buildings, public and private, were demolished. Of twenty-seven ships of war in the harbour, twelve disappeared; two were dashed to pieces, and ten shattered, and fourscore other vessels were swallowed up. Corresponding destruction took place among the shipping which had not entered the harbourt.

In the years 1638 and 1659, the two provin ces of Calabria were almost utterly destroyed by

&c.

*Phil. Trans. abridged, London, 1809, vol. x. p. 656,

† Grossier's General Description of China, translated, &c., London, 1788. vol. i. p. 222.

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earthquakes*. In the year 1783, by a succession of earthquakes, from February 5, to March 28, inclusive, they were again laid waste; and Sicily was involved in the calamity. Sir William Hamilton relates, that in the part of Calabria comprehended between lat. 38° and 39° the face of the earth was entirely altered. Deep openings and chasms were formed in the plains. Some hills were lowered, others wholly levelled. Profound valleys were filled up by dislocated mountains. A tract of land a mile in length, and half a mile in breadth, situated in a flat valley, was transplanted to the distance of a mile, and left, with a cottage and large mulberry trees and olives still standing. From the city of Amantea, on the Tyrrene sea, to Cape Spartivento, and thence to Cape d'Alice on the Ionian sea, every village and town, to the number of nearly four hundred, without including villages with fewer than a hundred inhabitants, was damaged or totally destroy. ed. The heaviest loss of life was in the towns and plains on the western side of the mountains

* See the letters of Count Francesco Ippolito, to Sir William Hamilton, in Dodsley's Annual Register for 1783, p. 58.

Dejo, Sacro, and Caulone. At Casal Nuovo, the Princess Gerace, and upwards of four thousand of the inhabitants, perished. At Bagnara, the number of dead amounted to three thousand and seventeen. Radicina lost about three thousand: Palmi as many: Terra Nuova, about fourteen hundred: Seminari, still more. In the official returns to the Secretary of State at Naples, the number of persons specified as having been destroyed in the two Calabrias and in Sicily, by the earthquakes only, was thirty-two thousand three hundred and sixty-seven. But Sir William Hamilton adds, that he had sufficient reason to believe the whole number of persons destroyed, inclusive of strangers, to amount to forty thousand*.

On October 21st, 1766, the city of Cumana was entirely destroyed by an earthquake. The whole number of the houses was overturned in the space of a few minutes; and the shocks were hourly repeated during fourteen months. On

*Sir William Hamilton's Letter to the Royal Society of London, dated May 23d, 1783. Dodsley's Annual Register for 1783, p. 49, &c.

December 14, 1797, more than four fifths of the city was again destroyed by a similar visitation*. About the same period a very dreadful earthquake overthrew the towns of Riobomba, Hambato, and Tacunga, in the kingdom of Quitof. On March 26, 1812, the city of Carraccas in South America was almost instantaneously laid in ruins by an earthquake; and the loss of lives was estimated at five thousand. By the same earthquake La Guayra also was overthrown, and numbers of its inhabitants were killed, and other towns suffered greatly‡.

In the year 1810, the city of Havannah sustained great damage from a hurricane, followed by an earthquake. And even while I am writing these pages, I read in the public prints the two

Humboldt's Travels, &c. translated by H. M. Williams, London, 1814, vol. ii. p. 216, 217.

† Ibid. p. 235. Ibid. p. 233. See also Annual Register, 1812. Chronicle, p. 40. In No. IV. of the Journal of Science and the Arts, edited at the Royal Institution, an account is given (p. 400.) of this earthquake, and its very extensive and tremendous effects, by an eye-witness, M. Palacio Faxar. He computes that nearly twenty thousand persons perished in Venezuela.

following accounts; that a recent and severe earthquake had occurred between Tobasco and the South sea; by which, as it is stated, land thirty leagues in extent had been sunk, the whole face of the country torn up, the river Tobasco, and also the St. Francis covered with floating trees, and an Indian village swallowed with all its inhabitants*: and that the town of Votissa, near Athens, has been inundated by a sudden rising of the sea during a violent earthquake, and that about five thousand of the inhabitants perished in the floodt.

I am aware of only one objection, which might seem to furnish grounds for escaping the conclusion, that the appointed or permitted ravages of volcanoes and earthquakes on human life and happiness are indications that man is in a state of transgression, and has lost the original favour of his Creator. It may be alleged, that the reasoning, if valid, would equally apply to the animal world; that if the destruction of men by the flames of the volcano, or by the jaws of the earth

* The Day and New Times, June 18, 1817, quoting from a New York newspaper.

The Star, Jan. 14, 1818.

M