ose extraordinary phenomena?

Independently of this, however, we know that during this earthquake, the
duration of which is stated by some to have been a week, and by others a
fortnight, people experienced an unusual stupor and headache, and that
many fainted away.

These destructive earthquakes extended as far as the neighbourhood of
Basle, and recurred until the year 1360 throughout Germany, France,
Silesia, Poland, England, and Denmark, and much further north.

Great and extraordinary meteors appeared in many places, and were
regarded with superstitious horror. A pillar of fire, which on the 20th
of December, 1348, remained for an hour at sunrise over the pope's palace
in Avignon; a fireball, which in August of the same year was seen at
sunset over Paris, and was distinguished from similar phenomena by its
longer duration, not to mention other instances mixed up with wonderful
prophecies and omens, are recorded in the chronicles of that age.

The order of the seasons seemed to be inverted; rains, flood, and
failures in crops were so general that few places were exempt from them;
and though an historian of this century assure us that there was an
abundance in the granaries and storehouses, all his contemporaries, with
one voice, contradict him. The consequences of failure in the crops were
soon felt, especially in Italy and the surrounding countries, where, in
this year, a rain, which continued for four months, had destroyed the
seed. In the larger cities they were compelled, in the spring of 1347,
to have recourse to a distribution of bread among the poor, particularly
at Florence, where they erected large bakehouses, from which, in April,
ninety-four thousand loaves of bread, each of twelve ounces in weight,
were daily dispensed. It is plain, however, that humanity could only
partially mitigate the general distress, not altogether obviate it.

Diseases, the invariable consequence of famine, broke out in the country
as well as in cities; children died of hunger in their mother's
arms--want, misery, and despair were general throughout Christendom.

Such are the events which took place before the eruption of the Black
Plague in Europe. Contemporaries have explained them after their own
manner, and have thus, like their posterity, under similar circumstances,
given a proof that mortals possess neither senses nor intellectual powers
sufficiently acute to comprehend the phenomena produced by the earth's
organism