would appear incredible if we had not seen it in various places.

"Then every one rushes outside, animals take to flight, children cry
through the streets, men and women, seized with terror, know not where
to take refuge, thinking at every moment that they must be either
overwhelmed in the ruins of the houses or buried in some abyss about to
open under their feet; some, falling to their knees in the snow, cry for
mercy; others pass the rest of the night in prayer, because the
earthquake still continues with a certain undulation, almost like that
of ships at sea, and such that some feel from these shocks the same
sickness that they endure upon the water.

"The disorder was much greater in the forest. It seemed that there was a
battle between the trees, which were hurled together, and not only their
branches but even their trunks seemed to leave their places to leap upon
each other with a noise and a confusion which made our savages say that
the whole forest was drunk.

"There seemed to be the same combat between the mountains, of which some
were uprooted and hurled upon the others, leaving great chasms in the
places whence they came, and now burying the trees, with which they were
covered, deep in the earth up to their tops, now thrusting them in, with
branches downward, taking the place of the roots, so that they left only
a forest of upturned trunks.

"While this general destruction was going on on land, sheets of ice five
or six feet thick were broken and shattered to pieces, and split in many
places, whence arose thick vapour or streams of mud and sand which
ascended high into the air; our springs either flowed no longer or ran
with sulphurous waters; the rivers were either lost from sight or became