“He looketh on the earth, and it trembleth: he toucheth the hills, and
they smoke.”—PSALMS.
“Towers, temples, palaces,
Flung from their deep foundations, roof on roof
Crushed horrible, and pile on pile o’erturned,
Fall total.”—MALLET.
“The globe around earth’s hollow surface shakes,
And is the ceiling of her sleeping sons.
O’er devastation we blind revels keep;
Whose buried towns support the dancer’s heel.”—YOUNG.
That fires, to a very great extent, and produced by various causes,
exist at different depths beneath the surface of the earth, must be
entirely evident to those who have perused the accounts of volcanoes in
our previous pages; and recent experiments have shown, that where the
substances in which such fires occur, lie at a considerable depth, and
are surmounted by a very deep and heavy superincumbent pressure, more
especially when they contain large portions of elastic gases, the effect
of such fires will be much greater, and more diversified, than where
these circumstances are absent.
Among the most powerful and extraordinary of these effects earthquakes
are to be reckoned. They are unquestionably the most dreadful of the
phenomena of nature, and are not confined to those countries which, from
the influence of climate, their vicinity to volcanic mountains, or any
other similar cause, have been considered as more particularly subject
to them, their effects having oft been felt in North America, although
not in so extensive and calamitous a degree. Their shocks and the
eruptions of volcanoes, have been considered as modifications of the
effects of one common cause; and where the agitation produced by an
earthquake extends further than there is reason to suspect a
subterraneous commotion, it is probably propagated through the earth
nearly in the same way that a noise is conveyed through the air. The
different hypotheses which have been imagined on this subject may be
reduced to the following. Some naturalists have ascribed earthquakes to
water, others to fire, and others, again, to air; each of these powerful
agents being supposed to operate in the bowels of the earth, which they
assert to abound everywhere with huge subterraneous caverns, veins and
canals, some filled with water, others with gaseous exhalations, and
others replete with various substances, such as niter, sulphur, bitumen
and vitriol. Each of these opinions has its advocates, who have written
copiously on the subject.
In a paper published in the “Philosophical Transactions,” Dr. Lister
ascribes earthquakes, as well as thunder and lightning, to the
inflammable breath of the pyrites, a substantial sulphur, capable of
spontaneous combustion; in a word, as Pliny had observed before him, he
supposes an earthquake to be nothing more than subterraneous thunder.
Dr. Woodward thinks, that the subterraneous fire which continually
raises the water from the abyss, or great reservoir, in the center of
the earth, for the supply of dew, rain, springs and rivers, being
diverted from its ordinary course by some accidental obstruction in the
pores through which it is used to ascend to the surface, becomes, by
such means, preternaturally assembled in a greater quantity than usual,
in one place, and thus causes a rarefaction and intumescence of the
water of the abyss, throwing it into greater commotions, and at the same
time making the like effort on the earth, which, being expanded on the
surface of the abyss, occasions an earthquake. Mr. Mitchell supposes
these phenomena to be occasioned by subterraneous fires, which, if a
large quantity of water be let loose on them suddenly, may produce a
vapor, the quantity and elastic force of which may fully suffice for the
purpose. Again, M. Amontus, a member of the French Academy of Sciences,
endeavors to prove, that, on the principle of experiments made on the
weight and elasticity of the air, a moderate degree of heat may bring
that element into a state capable of causing earthquakes.
Modern electrical discoveries have thrown much light on this subject.
Dr. Stukely strenuously denies that earthquakes are to be ascribed to
subterraneous winds, fires or vapors, and thinks that there is not any
evidence of the cavernous structure of the earth, which such a
hypothesis requires. Subterraneous vapors he thinks, are altogether
inadequate to the effects produced by earthquakes, more particularly in
cases where the shock is of considerable extent: for a subterraneous
power, capable of moving a surface of earth only thirty miles in
diameter, must be lodged at least fifteen or twenty miles below the
surface, and move an inverted cone of solid earth, whose basis is thirty
miles in diameter, and its axis fifteen or twenty miles, which he thinks
absolutely impossible. How much more inconceivable is it, then, that any
such power could have produced the earthquake of 1755, which was felt in
various parts of Europe and Africa, and in the Atlantic ocean; or that
which in Asia Minor, in the seventeenth year of the Christian era,
destroyed thirteen great cities in one night, and shook a mass of earth
three hundred miles in diameter. To effect this, the moving power,
supposing it to have been internal fire or vapor, must have been lodged
two hundred miles beneath the surface of the earth! Besides, in
earthquakes, the effect is instantaneous; whereas the operation of
elastic vapor, and its discharge, must be gradual, and require a long
space of time; and if these be owing to explosions, they must alter the
surface of the country where they happen, destroy the fountains and
springs, and change the course of its rivers, results which are
contradicted by history and observation.
To these and other considerations the doctor adds, that the strokes
which ships receive during an earthquake, must be occasioned by
something which can communicate motion with much greater velocity than
any heaving of the earth under the sea, caused by the elasticity of
generated vapors, which would merely produce a gradual swell, and not
such an impulsion of the water as resembles a violent blow on the bottom
of a ship, or its striking on a rock. Hence he deems the common
hypothesis insufficient, and adduces several reasons to show that
earthquakes are in reality electric shocks. To confirm this opinion, he
notices, among other phenomena, either preceding or attending
earthquakes, that the weather is usually dry and warm for some time
before they happen, and that the surface of the ground is thus
previously prepared for that kind of electrical vibration in which they
consist; while, at the same time, in several places where they have
occurred, the internal parts, at a small depth beneath the surface, were
moist and boggy. Hence he infers, that they reach very little beneath
the surface. That the southern regions are more subject to earthquakes
than the northern, he thinks is owing to the greater warmth and dryness
of the earth and air, which are qualities so necessary to electricity.
It may here be noticed, that, before the earthquakes of London, in 1749,
all vegetation was remarkably forward; and it is well known, that
electricity quickens vegetation. The frequent and singular appearance of
boreal and austral _auroræ_, and the variety of meteors by which
earthquakes are preceded, indicate an electrical state of the
atmosphere; and the doctor apprehends that, in this state of the earth
and air, nothing more is necessary to produce these phenomena, than the
approach of a non-electric cloud, and the discharge of its contents, on
any part of the earth, when in a highly electrified state. In the same
way as the discharge from an excited tube occasions a commotion in the
human body, so the shock produced by the discharge between the cloud and
many miles in compass of solid earth, must be an earthquake, and the
snap from the contact the noise attending it.
The theory of M. de St. Lazare differs from the above hypothesis, as
to the electrical cause. It ascribes the production of earthquakes to
the interruption of the equilibrium between the electrical matter
diffused in the atmosphere, and that which belongs to the mass of our
globe, and pervades its bowels. If the electrical fluid should be
superabundant, as may happen from a variety of causes, its current, by
the laws of motion peculiar to fluids, is carried toward those places
where it is in a similar quantity; and thus it will sometimes pass
from the internal parts of the globe into the atmosphere. This
happening, if the equilibrium be reëstablished without difficulty, the
current merely produces the effect of what M. de St. Lazare calls
ascending thunder; but if this reëstablishment be opposed by
considerable and multiplied obstacles, the consequence is then an
earthquake, the violence and extent of which are in exact proportion
to the degree of interruption of the equilibrium, the depth of the
electric matter, and the obstacles which are to be surmounted. If the
electric furnace be sufficiently large and deep to give rise to the
formation of a conduit or issue, the production of a volcano will
follow, its successive eruptions being, according to him, nothing more
in reality than electric repulsions of the substances contained in the
bowels of the earth. From this reasoning he endeavors to deduce the
practicability of forming a counter-earthquake, and a counter-volcano,
by means of certain electrical conductors, which he describes, so as
to prevent these convulsions in the bowels of the earth.
The opinion of Signior Beccaria is nearly similar; and from his
hypothesis and that of Dr. Stukely, the celebrated Priestly has
endeavored to form one still more general and more feasible. He supposes
the electric fluid to be, in some mode or other, accumulated on one part
of the surface of the earth, and, on account of the dryness of the
season, not to diffuse itself readily: it may thus, as Beccaria
conjectures, force its way into the higher regions of the air, forming
clouds out of the vapors which float in the atmosphere, and may occasion
a sudden shower, which may further promote its progress. The whole
surface being thus unloaded, will, like any other conducting substance,
receive a concussion, either on parting with, or on receiving any
quantity of the electric fluid. The rushing noise will likewise sweep
over the whole extent of the country; and, on this supposition also, the
fluid, in its discharge from the surface of the earth, will naturally
follow the course of the rivers, and will take the advantage of any
eminences to facilitate its ascent into the higher regions of the air.
Such are the arguments in favor of the electrical hypothesis; but, since
it has been supported with so much ability, an ingenious writer,
Whitehurst, in his “Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the
Earth,” contends that subterraneous fire, and the steam generated from
it, are the true and real causes of earthquakes. When, he observes, it
is considered that the expansive force of steam is to that of gunpowder
as twenty-eight to one, it may be conceded that this expansive force,
and the elasticity of steam, are in every way capable of producing the
stupendous effects attributed to these phenomena. This is, now, the
almost universally received theory as to the cause of earthquakes, that
they originate in the same general causes which produce volcanoes; that
is, from the action of the heat and fires that are found in the interior
of the earth. When these fires find ready vent, they produce the
overflowing volcano; but when shut up and confined, their force is so
great as to shake the solid crust of the globe which covers them.
Among the most striking phenomena of earthquakes, which present a
fearful assemblage of the combined effects of air, earth, fire and
water, in a state of unrestrained contention, may be noticed the
following. Before the percussion a rumbling sound is heard, proceeding
either from the air, or from fire, or, perhaps, from both in
conjunction, forcing their way through the chasms of the earth, and
endeavoring to liberate themselves: this, as has been seen, likewise
happens in volcanic eruptions. Secondly, a violent agitation or heaving
of the sea, sometimes preceding, and sometimes following the shock: this
is also a volcanic effect. Thirdly, a spouting up of the waters to a
great hight, a phenomenon which is common to earthquakes and volcanoes,
and which can not be readily accounted for. Fourthly, a rocking of the
earth, and, occasionally, what may be termed a perpendicular rebounding:
this diversity has been supposed by some naturalists to arise chiefly
from the situation of the place, relatively to the subterraneous fire,
which, when immediately beneath, causes the earth to rise, and when at a
distance, to rock. Fifthly, earthquakes are sometimes observed to travel
onward, so as to be felt in different countries at different hours of
the same day. This may be accounted for by the violent shock given to
the earth at one place, and communicated progressively by an undulatory
motion, successively affecting different regions as it passes along, in
the same way as the blow given by a stone thrown into a lake, is not
perceived at the shore until some time after the first concussion.
Sixthly, the shock is sometimes instantaneous, like the explosion of
gunpowder, and sometimes tremulous, lasting for several minutes. The
nearer to the observer the place where the shock is first given, the
more instantaneous and simple it appears; while, at a greater distance,
the earth seems to redouble the first blow, with a sort of vibratory
continuation. Lastly, as the waters have in general so great a share in
the production of earthquakes, it is not surprising that they should
generally follow the breaches made by the force of fire, and appear in
the great chasms opened by the earth.