Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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In 1530, The
Inhabitants Were Alarmed By New Shocks On The Coasts Of Paria And
Cumana.
The land was inundated by the sea, and the small fort,
built by James Castellon at New Toledo,* was entirely destroyed.
(*
This was the first name given to the city of Cumana - Girolamo
Benzoni Hist. del Mondo Nuovo pages 3, 31, and 33. James Castellon
arrived at St. Domingo in 1521, after the appearance of the
celebrated Bartholomew de las Casas in these countries. On
attentively reading the narratives of Benzoni and Caulin, we find
that the fort of Castellon was built near the mouth of the
Manzanares (alla ripa del fiume de Cumana); and not, as some modern
travellers have asserted, on the mountain where now stands the
castle of San Antonio.) At the same time an enormous opening was
formed in the mountains of Cariaco, on the shores of the gulf
bearing that name, when a great body of salt-water, mixed with
asphaltum, issued from the micaceous schist. Earthquakes were very
frequent about the end of the sixteenth century; and, according to
the traditions preserved at Cumana, the sea often inundated the
shores, rising from fifteen to twenty fathoms.
As no record exists at Cumana, and its archives, owing to the
continual devastations of the termites, or white ants, contain no
document that goes back farther than a hundred and fifty years, we
are unacquainted with the precise dates of the ancient earthquakes.
We only know, that, in times nearer our own, the year 1776 was at
once the most fatal to the colonists, and the most remarkable for
the physical history of the country.
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