tuated in the district of Quito, not far from the base of
the great volcano of Tunguragua. That mountain was probably the center
of disturbance, and the shock was experienced with disastrous effects
over a district of country extending about 120 miles from north to
south and about sixty miles from east to west. Every town and village
comprehended within this district was reduced to ruins. The shocks,
however, were felt, though in a milder form, over a much larger area,
extending upwards of 500 miles from north to south and more than 400
miles from east to west.

At Riobamba the shocks, which began at about eight o'clock in the
morning, are said to have been vertical. Some faint idea may be formed
of the extreme violence of this motion from the fact mentioned by
Humboldt that the dead bodies of some of the inhabitants who perished
were tossed over a small river to the height of several hundred feet,
and landed on an adjacent hill.

Vertical movements, so powerful and so long continued, could not fail
to produce an enormous displacement of the ground, and to be very
destructive to all buildings which it sustained. The soil was rent,
and, as it were, torn asunder and twisted in an extraordinary manner.
Several of the fissures opened and closed again; many persons were
engulfed in them; but a few saved themselves by simply stretching out
their arms, so that, when the fissure closed, the upper parts of their
bodies were left above the ground, thus admitting of their being
easily extricated. In some instances whole cavalcades of horsemen and
troops of laden mules disappeared in those chasms; while some few
escaped by throwing themselves back from the edge of the cleft.

The amount of simultaneous elevation and depression of the ground was
in some cases as much as twelve feet; and several persons who were in
the choir of one of the churches escaped by simply stepping on the
pavement of the street, which was brought up to a level with the spot
where they stood. Instances occurred of whole houses sinking bodily
into the earth, till their roofs were fairly underground; but so
little were the buildings thus engulfed injured, that their
inhabitants were able still to live in them, and by the light of
flambeaux to pass from room to room, the doors opening and shutting as
easily as before. The people remained in them, subsisting on the
provisions they had in store, for the space of two days, until they
were extricated safe and sou