This celebrated and rich mountain city lies far removed from any active
volcano. The noise began about midnight on the 9th of January, 1784, and
continued for a month. I have been enabled to give a circumstantial
p 210
description of it from the report of many witnesses, and from the documents
of the municipality, of which I was allowed to make use. From the 13th to
the 16th of January, it seemed to the inhabitants as if heavy clouds lay
beneath their feet, from which issued alternate slow rolliing sounds and
short, quick claps of thunder. The noise abated as gradually as it had
begun. It was limited to a small space, and was not heard in a basaltic
district at the distance of a few miles. Almost all the inhabitants, in
terror, left the city, in which large masses of silver ingots were stored;
but the most courageous, and those more accustomed to subterranean thunder,
soon returned, in order to drive off the bands of robbers who had attempted
to possess themselves of the treasures of the city. Neither on the surface
of the earth, nor in mines 1600 feet in depth, was the slightest shock to be
perceived. No similar noise had ever before been heard on the elevated
tableland of Mexico, nor has this terrific phenomenon since occurred there.
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