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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About Nine In The Evening There Was Another Shock, Much Slighter
Than The Former, But Attended With A Subterraneous Noise.
The
barometer was a little lower than usual; but the progress of the
horary variations or small atmospheric tides, was no way
interrupted.
The mercury was precisely at the minimum of height at
the moment of the earthquake; it continued rising till eleven in
the evening, and sank again till half after four in the morning,
conformably to the law which regulates barometrical variations. In
the night between the 3rd and 4th of November the reddish vapour
was so thick that I could not distinguish the situation of the
moon, except by a beautiful halo of 20 degrees diameter.
Scarcely twenty-two months had elapsed since the town of Cumana had
been almost totally destroyed by an earthquake. The people regard
vapours which obscure the horizon, and the subsidence of wind
during the night, as infallible pregnostics of disaster. We had
frequent visits from persons who wished to know whether our
instruments indicated new shocks for the next day; and alarm was
great and general when, on the 5th of November, exactly at the same
hour as on the preceding day, there was a violent gust of wind,
attended by thunder, and a few drops of rain. No shock was felt.
The wind and storm returned during five or six days at the same
hour, almost at the same minute. The inhabitants of Cumana, and of
many other places between the tropics, have long since observed
that atmospherical changes, which are, to appearance, the most
accidental, succeed each other for whole weeks with astonishing
regularity.
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