their branches
having been torn off in the descent. It is particularly remarked in
this, as in the narratives of so many earthquakes, that fish were taken
in great numbers on the coast during the shocks. The correspondents of
Sir Hans Sloane, who collected with care the accounts of eye-witnesses
of the catastrophe, refer constantly to _subsidences_, and some supposed
the whole of Jamaica to have sunk down.[710]

_Reflections on the amount of change in the last one hundred and sixty
years._--I have now only enumerated some few of the earthquakes of the
last 160 years, respecting which facts illustrative of geological
inquiries are on record. Even if my limits permitted, it would be an
unprofitable task to examine all the obscure and ambiguous narratives
of similar events of earlier epochs; although, if the places were now
examined by geologists well practised in the art of interpreting the
monuments of physical changes, many events which have happened within
the historical era might doubtless be still determined with precision.
It must not be imagined that, in the above sketch of the occurrences of
a short period, I have given an account of all, or even the greater
part, of the mutations which the earth has undergone by the agency of
subterranean movements. Thus, for example, the earthquake of Aleppo, in
the present century, and of Syria, in the middle of the eighteenth,
would doubtless have afforded numerous phenomena, of great geological
importance, had those catastrophes been described by scientific
observers. The shocks in Syria in 1759, were protracted for three
months, throughout a space of ten thousand square leagues: an area
compared to which that of the Calabrian earthquake in 1783 was
insignificant. Accon, Saphat, Balbeck, Damascus, Sidon, Tripoli, and
many other places, were almost entirely levelled to the ground. Many
thousands of the inhabitants perished in each; and, in the valley of
Balbeck alone, 20,000 men are said to have been victims to the
convulsion. In the absence of scientific accounts, it would be as
irrelevant to our present purpose to enter into a detailed account of
such calamities, as to follow the track of an invading army, to
enumerate the cities burnt or rased to the ground, and reckon the number
of individuals who perished by famine or the sword.

_Deficiency of historical records._--If such, then, be the amount of
ascertained changes in the last 160 years, notwithstanding the extreme
de