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discomfort.
Great fires break out over the elevated plateaus and hill-sides, during the dry season. They sweep with incredible rapidity across great tracts, levelling everything in the way. The mountains seem tipped with volcanic flames. The angry glow spreads over the night, and its smoke mixes with the parched air by day. These fires commence by some carelessness, though they are sometimes attributed to the action of the son's rays, concentrated by the gray cliffs upon great masses of vegetation dried to tinder.
In the rainy season the earthquakes occur; and not a year passes without the experience of several shocks in different parts of the island. The northern part is exempt from them.[D] Those which take place in the west, around the shores of the great bay upon which Port-au-Prince is situated, are severe, and sometimes very disastrous. At mid-day the wind falls instantly, there is a dead calm on land and sea, the heat is consequently more intense, and the atmosphere suffocating; then the vibrations occur, after which the wind begins to blow again. Sometimes, at an interval of ten or twelve hours, there is a supplementary shock, less violent than the first one. It is said that the coast-caves bellow just before an earthquake. Their noise probably seems more emphatic In the sudden calm which is the real announcement of the earth's shudder.
[Footnote D: Not entirely. The great earthquake of the 7th of May, 1842, was very destructive at Cap Haytien. On this occasion Port-au-Prince escaped with little injury.]
Port-au-Prince was entirely destroyed by an earthquake in June, 1770. The Inhabitants built the new town upon the edge of the gulf which had just swallowed up their old one, convinced that the same disaster would not recur in the same spot. But that region is peculiarly sensitive: the subterranean connections with the Mexican and South-American volcanic districts chronicle disturbances whose centre is remote.
The rains are short and frequent showers, very heavy, and