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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Children Found Parents, By Whom They
Had Never Till Then Been Acknowledged; Restitutions Were Promised
By Persons Who Had Never Been Accused Of Fraud; And Families Who
Had Long Been At Enmity Were Drawn Together By The Tie Of Common
Calamity.
But if this feeling seemed to calm the passions of some,
and open the heart to pity, it had a contrary effect on others,
rendering them more rigorous and inhuman.
In great calamities
vulgar minds evince less of goodness than of energy. Misfortune
acts in the same manner as the pursuits of literature and the study
of nature; the happy influence of which is felt only by a few,
giving more ardour to sentiment, more elevation to the thoughts,
and increased benevolence to the disposition.
Shocks as violent as those which in about the space of a minute*
overthrew the city of Caracas, could not be confined to a small
portion of the continent. (* The duration of the earthquake, that
is to say the whole of the movements of undulation and rising
(undulacion y trepidacion), which occasioned the horrible
catastrophe of the 26th of March, 1812, was estimated by some at 50
seconds, by others at 1 minute 12 seconds.) Their fatal effects
extended as far as the provinces of Venezuela, Varinas, and
Maracaibo, along the coast; and especially to the inland mountains.
La Guayra, Mayquetia, Antimano, Baruta, La Vega, San Felipe, and
Merida, were almost entirely destroyed. The number of the dead
exceeded four or five thousand at La Guayra, and at the town of San
Felipe, near the copper-mines of Aroa. It would appear that on a
line running east-north-east and west-south-west from La Guayra and
Caracas to the lofty mountains of Niquitao and Merida, the violence
of the earthquake was principally directed. It was felt in the
kingdom of New Grenada from the branches of the high Sierra de
Santa Martha* (* As far as Villa de Los Remedios, and even to
Carthagena.) as far as Santa Fe de Bogota and Honda, on the banks
of the Magdalena, one hundred and eighty leagues from Caracas. It
was everywhere more violent in the Cordilleras of gneiss and
mica-slate, or immediately at their base, than in the plains; and
this difference was particularly striking in the savannahs of
Varinas and Casanara.* (* This is easily explained according to the
system of those geologists who are of opinion that all chains of
mountains, volcanic and not volcanic, have been formed by being
raised up, as if through crevices.) In the valleys of Aragua,
between Caracas and the town of San Felipe, the commotions were
very slight; and La Victoria, Maracay, and Valencia, scarcely
suffered at all, notwithstanding their proximity to the capital. At
Valecillo, a few leagues from Valencia, the yawning earth threw out
such an immense quantity of water, that it formed a new torrent.
The same phenomenon took place near Porto-Cabello.* (* It is
asserted that, in the mountains of Aroa, the ground, immediately
after the great shocks, was found covered with a very fine and
white earth, which appeared to have been projected through
crevices.) On the other hand, the lake of Maracaybo diminished
sensibly.
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