Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
exposed to gentle atmospheric action, and that its elevation has been exceedingly slow and
continuous.
During my stay at Rurúkan my curiosity was satisfied by experiencing a pretty sharp
earthquake-shock. On the evening of June 29th, at a quarter after eight, as I was sitting read-
ing, the house began shaking with a very gentle, but rapidly increasing motion. I sat still en-
joying the novel sensation for some seconds; but in less than half a minute it became strong
enough to shake me in my chair, and to make the house visibly rock about, and creak and
crack as if it would fall to pieces. Then began a cry throughout the village of 'Tana goyang!
tana goyang!' (Earthquake! earthquake!) Everybody rushed out of their houses—women
screamed and children cried—and I thought it prudent to go out too. On getting up, I found
my head giddy and my steps unsteady, and could hardly walk without falling. The shock
continued about a minute, during which time I felt as if I had been turned round and round,
and was almost sea-sick. Going into the house again, I found a lamp and a bottle of arrack
upset. The tumbler which formed the lamp had been thrown out of the saucer in which it
had stood. The shock appeared to be nearly vertical, rapid, vibratory, and jerking. It was suf-
ficient, I have no doubt, to have thrown down brick chimneys and walls and church towers;
but as the houses here are all low, and strongly framed of timber, it is impossible for them to
be much injured, except by a shock that would utterly destroy a European city. The people
told me it was ten years since they had had a stronger shock than this, at which time many
houses were thrown down and some people killed.
At intervals of ten minutes to half an hour, slight shocks and tremors were felt, sometimes
strong enough to send us all out again. There was a strange mixture of the terrible and the
ludicrous in our situation. We might at any moment have a much stronger shock, which
would bring down the house over us, or—what I feared more—cause a landslip, and send us
down into the deep ravine on the very edge of which the village is built; yet I could not help
laughing each time we ran out at a slight shock, and then in a few moments ran in again.
The sublime and the ridiculous were here literally but a step apart. On the one hand, the
most terrible and destructive of natural phenomena was in action around us—the rocks, the
mountains, the solid earth were trembling and convulsed, and we were utterly impotent to
guard against the danger that might at any moment overwhelm us. On the other hand was
the spectacle of a number of men, women, and children running in and out of their houses,
on what each time proved a very unnecessary alarm, as each shock ceased just as it became
strong enough to frighten us. It seemed really very much like 'playing at earthquakes,' and
made many of the people join me in a hearty laugh, even while reminding each other that it
really might be no laughing matter.
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