"] -- Tr.
This impression is not,
p 216
in my opinion, the result of a recollection of those fearful pictures of
devastation presented to our imaginations by the historical narratives of
the past, but is rather due to the sudden revelation of the delusive nature
of the inherent faith by which we had clung to a belief in the immobility of
the solid parts of the earth. We are accustomed from early childhood to
draw a contrast between the mobility of water and the immobility of the soil
on which we tread; and this feeling is confirmed by the evidence of our
senses. When, therefore, we suddenly feel the ground move beneath us, a
mysterious and natural force, with which we are previously unacquainted, is
revealed to us as an active disturbance of stability. A moment destroys the
illusion of a whole life; our deceptive faith in the repose of nature
vanishes, and we feel transported, as it were, into a realm of unknown
destructive forces. Every sound -- the faintest motion in the air --
arrests our attention, and we no longer trust the ground on which we stand.
Animals, especially dogs and swine, participate in the same anxious
disquietude; and even the crocodiles of the Orinoco, which are at other
times as dumb as our little lizards, leave the trembling bed of the river,
and run with loud cries into the adjacent forests.
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