CHAPTER XIII - EARTHQUAKES OF CARACCAS

Summary

The valley of Caraccas, a few years after Humboldt's visit, became the theatre of one of those physical revolutions which from time to time produce violent alterations upon the surface of our planet; involving the overthrow of cities, the destruction of human life, and a temporary agitation of those elements of nature on which the system of the universe is founded. In the narrative of his Journey to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent, he has recorded all that he could collect with certainty respecting the earthquake of the 26th March 1812, which destroyed the city of Caraceas, together with 20,000 inhabitants of the province of Venezuela.

When our travellers visited those countries, they found it to be a general opinion, that the eastern parts of the coasts were most exposed to the destructive effects of such concussions, and that the elevated districts, remote from the shores, were in a great measure secure; but in 1811 all these ideas were proved groundless.

At Humboldt's arrival in Terra Firma, he was struck with the connexion which appeared between the destruction of Cumana in 1797 and the eruption of volcanoes in the smaller West India islands. A similar principle was manifested in 1812, in the case of Caraccas. From the beginning of 1811 till 1813, a vast extent of the earth's surface, limited by the meridian of the Azores, the valley of the Ohio, the cordilleras of New Grenada, the coasts of Venezuela, and the volcanoes of the West Indies, was shaken by subterranean commotions, indicative of a common agency exerted at a great depth in the interior of the globe.