54 N A T U R A L : H I S T O R Y
Sea advanced and retired,. with an impetuofity mot to be relifted!;
'and yet no life, or -boat, or £hip was loft." The firft and fecond
fluxes and refluxes were not lb violent as the third and fourth, at
which tune the Sea was as rapid as that of a mill-ftream defcending
to an under-fhot wheel, and the rebounds of the Sea'continued in
their full fury for two hours; they then grew fainter gradually, and
the whole commotion ceafed about low-water. uln Penzance -pier,
three miles Weft of the Mount, the tide 'role eight fefet,'and in
.Newlyn pier, ojie mile farther Weft, ten feet high, the water" cdM-
ing .from the South-Eaft,- being as it were accumulated1 by;- thé
Weftern head-lands, which form Gwavas Lake near the laft-men-
tioned pier; but no material damage was done1 at'eithet place.
The :fame agitation, though lomewhat later in the day,-‘was o'b-
ferved in ’ the Northern Channel at the pier of Se lves;- where thé
higheft water rofe betwixt eight and nine feet, and in Hêyl Harbour
adjoining,= one rife was feven feet, the reft little than two y.
All this while there was not the leaft trembling1 orMotion ^sffthé
earth perceived in any parte near us’; ’ but on thedaöïEP'rdayy»Hibb&t
ten o’clock in the morning, the moft dreadful Eafrfhqfiake ever
known happened oh the Weftem coafts of Portugal and-Spains • The
city o f Lilbon was deftroyed, 30,000' perfonsj feme fay'Sfcire',-1 loft
their lives, St. Ubes, Sevil, Cadiz, .Sü Lucar, 'Óportp, Faro; were
greatly damaged, and many lives loft. Ships fixty leagues» d-iftant from
Lilbon, to the Weft, felt the Ihock in' tire fame *tfé^eë^"if'!t}féy
had ftruck upon rocks^ The Taghs rofe from teh?hndfVw,enty to
thirty feet perpendicular, ebbing and flowing feveral ^fênesp'but
every time decrealing; and between the agitahön’s fiff' the 'Sè'ap ?and
the violent lhaking of the earth, the defolations1 bf 'jthaf country are
not to be expreffed, and have never yet been exactly eftimated. 9
What connexion with or relation to thefe violèiit éöfivulfións ón
the Continent our little, and (thanks to Providence) 'momentary
agitations of the Sea on the coafts of_ Britain- had, :’tis difficult to
fay; but their happening both on the. fame day, and within a"few
hours of one another, the many repeated fluctuations in the river
Tagus as here in Cornwall, by alternate {wells and linkings, the
Ihocks felt on. the fame day far to the Weft by feveral Drips; all
thefe circumftances leem to declare very confidently, that what we
felt was either the fainter part of that deplorable Ihock at Lilbon, or
the laft expiring efforts of feme limilar fubterraneous ftruggles farther
to the Weft and South-.Weft under the Atlantic Ocean. Indeed,
1 At .Swanfea, in Wales, where their tide is
liter than with us, and the land farther to the
North, the agitation, by the accounts publifhed
from thence, was fome hours later, by which it
is more than probable that the momentum of this
unufual agitation had its firft rife far to the South
W us.
it