The eloquent Humboldt remarks, that the activity of an igneous
mountain, however terrific and picturesque the spectacle may be which
it presents to our contemplation, is always limited to a very small
space. It is far otherwise with earthquakes, which, although scarcely
perceptible to the eye, nevertheless simultaneously propagate their
waves to a distance of many thousand miles. The great earthquake which
destroyed the city of Lisbon, November 1st, 1755, was felt in the
Alps, on the coast of Sweden, into the Antilles, Antigua, Barbadoes,
and Martinique; in the great Canadian lakes, in Thuringia, in the
flat country of northern Germany, and in the small inland lakes on
the shores of the Baltic. Remote springs were interrupted in their
flow,--a phenomenon attending earthquakes which had been noticed among
the ancients by Demetrius the Callatian. The hot springs of Töplitz
dried up and returned, inundating every thing around, and having their
waters coloured with iron ochre. At Cadiz, the sea rose to an elevation
of sixty-four feet; while in the Antilles, where the tide usually
rises only from twenty-six to twenty-eight inches, it suddenly rose
about twenty feet, the water being of an inky blackness. It has been
computed that, on November 1st, 1755, a portion of the earth’s surface
four times greater than that of Europe was simultaneously shaken.[31]
As yet there is no manifestation of force known to us (says the
vivid denunciation of the philosopher), including even the murderous
invention of our own race, by which a greater number of people have
been killed in the short space of a few minutes: 60,000 were destroyed
in Sicily in 1693, from 30,000 to 40,000 in the earthquake of Riobamba
in 1797, and probably five times as many in Asia Minor and Syria under
Tiberius and Justinian the elder, about the years 19 and 526.