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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It Is Not The Same With Respect To
The Revolutions Of The Physical World.
These are described with
least accuracy when they happen to be contemporary with civil
dissensions.
Earthquakes and eruptions of volcanoes strike the
imagination by the evils which are their necessary consequence.
Tradition seizes on whatever is vague and marvellous; and amid
great public calamities, as in private misfortunes, man seems to
shun that light which leads us to discover the real causes of
events, and to understand the circumstances by which they are
attended.
I have recorded in this work all I have been able to collect, and
on the accuracy of which I can rely, respecting the earthquake of
the 26th of March, 1812. By that catastrophe the town of Caracas
was destroyed, and more than twenty thousand persons perished
throughout the extent of the province of Venezuela. The intercourse
which I have kept up with persons of all classes has enabled me to
compare the description given by many eye-witnesses, and to
interrogate them on objects that may throw light on physical
science in general. The traveller, as the historian of nature,
should verify the dates of great catastrophes, examine their
connection and their mutual relations, and should mark in the rapid
course of ages, in the continual progress of successive changes,
those fixed points with which other catastrophes may one day be
compared. All epochs are proximate to each other in the immensity
of time comprehended in the history of nature. Years which have
passed away seem but a few instants; and the physical descriptions
of a country, even when they offer subjects of no very powerful and
general interest, have at least the advantage of never becoming
old. Similar considerations, no doubt, led M. de la Condamine to
describe in his Voyage a l'Equateur, the memorable eruptions of the
volcano of Cotopaxi,* which took place long after his departure
from Quito. (* Those of the 30th of November, 1744, and of the 3rd
of September, 1750.) I feel the less hesitation in following the
example of that celebrated traveller, as the events I am about to
relate will help to elucidate the theory of volcanic reaction, or
the influence of a system of volcanoes on a vast space of
circumjacent territory.
At the time when M. Bonpland and myself visited the provinces of
New Andalusia, New Barcelona, and Caracas, it was generally
believed that the most eastern parts of those coasts were
especially exposed to the destructive effects of earthquakes. The
inhabitants of Cumana dreaded the valley of Caracas, on account of
its damp and variable climate, and its gloomy and misty sky; whilst
the inhabitants of the temperate valley regarded Cumana as a town
whose inhabitants incessantly inhaled a burning atmosphere, and
whose soil was periodically agitated by violent commotions.
Unmindful of the overthrow of Riobamba and other very elevated
towns, and not aware that the peninsula of Araya, composed of
mica-slate, shares the commotions of the calcareous coast of
Cumana, well-informed persons imagined they discerned security in
the structure of the primitive rocks of Caracas, as well as in the
elevated situation of this valley.
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