Geographies of Hazard - The Earthquake Observers - page 96

to the earthquake of 1799 thus had revolutionary potential. No single mo-
ment of his controversial South American journey better expressed his
liberatory vision than his embrace—in mind and body—of the shaking
ground of Cumana. 28
Humboldt would return to this theme late in life in his magnum opus,
Cosmos. in keeping with what one commentator calls his “subversive vision
of science for the people,” Cosmos was meant for the widest possible audi-
ence. 29 Humboldt urged his readers to recognize that their own existence
was implicated in the forces shaping the earth, to “perceive that the destiny
of mankind is in part dependent on the formation of the external surface
of the earth.” This was not only a work of popular enlightenment, but also
an invitation. Humboldt sought contributors to his physical geography far
beyond europe's cultured urban centers. Cosmos was a bid (if perhaps a
misdirected one) to enlist the “men who live in the fields, the forests and
the mountains” in his globe-spanning program of precision measurement.
“The great problem of life is to produce a lot in a little time, and it is certain
that if methods of measuring with very simple instruments were more wide-
spread among the public, if the attention of men who live in the fields, the
forests and the mountains were directed more towards the magnitude and
distances of objects, after so many voyages and investigations pursued in
the two hemispheres, our geological ideas (the most beautiful, most inter-
esting part of human knowledge) would be advanced threefold.” 30 in Hum-
boldt's vision, natives of every continent would become scientific observers
and contribute to a truly global science.
in Cosmos Humboldt offered his most extensive and dramatic discussion
of the mental effects of earthquakes, of “the deep and peculiar impression
left on the mind by the first earthquake which we experience, even where it
is not attended by any subterranean noise.” Here he raised the vexed ques-
tion of whether earthquakes affected europeans differently than inhabitants
of the New World. He cited the observations of the younger Swiss naturalist
Johann Jakob Tschudi:
The inhabitant of Lima, who from childhood has frequently witnessed these
convulsions of nature, is roused from his sleep by the shock, and rushes from
his apartment with the cry of “Misericordia!” The foreigner from the north
of europe, who knows nothing of earthquakes but by description, waits with
impatience to feel the movement of the earth, and longs to hear with his own
ear the subterranean sounds which he has hitherto considered fabulous. With
levity he treats the apprehension of a coming convulsion, and laughs at the