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 seasick. 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 sufficient, I have no
doubt, to have thrown down brick, chimneys, 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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