Cotocachi and Imbabura, from which issued immense torrents
of water, mud, and bituminous substances, carrying away and drowning
hundreds of cattle. A caravan of mules going to Chillo with cotton-bales
was found four days after grazing on a narrow strip of land, on each
side of which was a fearful chasm, while the muleteers were killed.

At Quito comparatively little damage was done. Fifteen lives were lost,
and the churches, convents, and many private houses are in a state of
dilapidation. Domes and arches, which are much used because of the
scarcity of timber, were first to fall.

In the fierceness of the shock, and the extent of the territory shaken,
the earthquake of August, 1868, is without a parallel in the New World.
The destruction of life (50,000 officially reported in Ecuador alone)
has not been equaled in any other earthquake during this century. The
tremor was felt over four republics, and from the Andes to the Sandwich
Islands. The water-wave was felt on the coast of New Zealand sixteen
hours after it had set a United States gunboat, on the sand-hills of
Arica. In some respects it is surpassed only by the Lisbon earthquake,
which reached from Sweden to the West Indies, and from Barbary to
Scotland. The loss of property seems to have been greatest in Peru, and
the loss of life greatest in Ecuador. The commotion seemed to be most
violent along the Western Cordillera, though it was felt even on the
Napo.

There are few places where the crust of our planet is long at rest.
Brazil, Egypt, Russia, and Greenland are comparatively free from
earthquakes. But had we delicate instruments scattered throughout the
world, upheaval and subsidence would doubtless be detected in every part
of the so-called _terra firma_. The sea, and not the land, is the true
image of stability.

"Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure brow:
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest now."

Earthquakes have occurred in every period of geological history, and are
independent of latitude. The first well-known earthquake came in the
year 63, and shattered Pompeii and Herculaneum sixteen years before they
were overwhelmed by the first recorded eruption of Vesuvius. The most
celebrated earthquake, and perhaps the most terrible manifestation of
force during the human period, was in 1755. The shock, which seemed to
originate in the bed of the Atlantic, pervaded one twelfth of the
earth's surface. Unhappy Lisbon stood in its path.

An