B._ You are very welcome, my dear. You lately read an account of
one of these dreadful convulsions of nature. Where did it happen?
_Ferdinand._ In Jamaica, mamma, in the year 1692: it is a most dreadful
account. In two minutes' time, the town of Port Royal was destroyed,
and the houses sunk in a gulph forty fathoms deep. In every fathom,
there are six feet, you know, mamma; so, if we multiply forty by six, we
shall find that these poor creatures were instantly buried, with their
houses, to the depth of two hundred and forty feet under ground. In
other parts of the island, the sand rose like the waves of the sea,
lifting up all who stood upon it, and then dashing them into pits. The
water was thrown out of the wells with the greatest violence; the
openings of the earth were in some places so broad, that the streets
appeared twice as wide as they were before: in others, the ground yawned
and closed again continually, swallowing, at each yawn, two or three
hundred of the wretched inhabitants: sometimes the chasms suddenly
closing, caught them by the middle, and crushed them instantly to death.
From openings still more dreadful than these, spouted up cataracts of
water, drowning such as the earthquake had spared. Every thing was
destroyed: houses, people, and trees, shared one universal ruin. Great
pools of water afterwards appeared, which, when dried by the sun, left
only a plain of barren sand, without a single trace of its former
inhabitants.
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