Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
- Page 277 of 779 - First - Home
We Can Scarcely Doubt, That The Earth, When Opened And Agitated By
Shocks, Spreads Occasionally Gaseous Emanations Through The
Atmosphere, In Places Remote From The Mouths Of Volcanoes Not
Extinct.
At Cumana, it has already been observed that flames and
vapours mixed with sulphurous acid spring up from the most arid
soil.
In other parts of the same province, the earth ejects water
and petroleum. At Riobamba, a muddy and inflammable mass, called
moya, issues from crevices that close again, and accumulates into
elevated hills. At about seven leagues from Lisbon, near Colares,
during the terrible earthquake of the 1st of November, 1755, flames
and a column of thick smoke were seen to issue from the flanks of
the rocks of Alvidras, and, according to some witnesses, from the
bosom of the sea.
Elastic fluids thrown into the atmosphere may act locally on the
barometer, not by their mass, which is very small, compared to the
mass of the atmosphere, but because, at the moment of great
explosions, an ascending current is probably formed, which
diminishes the pressure of the air. I am inclined to think that in
the majority of earthquakes nothing escapes from the agitated
earth; and that, when gaseous emanations and vapours are observed,
they oftener accompany or follow, than precede the shocks. This
circumstance would seem to explain the mysterious influence of
earthquakes in equinoctial America, on the climate, and on the
order of the dry and rainy seasons. If the earth generally act on
the air only at the moment of the shocks, we can conceive why a
sensible meteorological change so rarely precedes those great
revolutions of nature.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 277 of 779
Words from 75165 to 75438
of 211363