Jamaica is remarkable for earthquakes. The inhabitants Dr. Sloan informs us, expect one every year. That author gives us the history of one in 1687: another horrible one in 1692, is described by several anonymous authors. In two minutes time it shook down and drowned nine-tenths of the town of Port Royal. The houses sunk outright, thirty or forty fathoms deep. The earth opening, swallowed up people; and they rose in other streets; some in the middle of the harbor, and yet were saved; though there were 2000 people lost, and 1000 acres of land sunk. All the houses were thrown down throughout the island. One Hopkins had his plantation removed half a mile from its place. Of all wells, from one fathom to six or seven, the water flew out at the top with a vehement motion. While the houses, on the one side of the street were swallowed up, on the other they were thrown on heaps; and the sand in the street rose like waves in the sea, lifting up every body that stood on it, and immediately dropping down into pits; and at the same instant, a flood of waters breaking in, rolled them over and over; some catching hold of beams and rafters, &c. Ships and sloops in the harbor were overset and lost; the Swan frigate particularly, by the motion of the sea, and sinking of the wharf, was driven over the tops of many houses. It was attended with a hollow rumbling noise like that of thunder. In less than a minute three quarters of the houses, and the ground they stood on with the inhabitants, were all sunk quite under water; and the little part, left behind, was no better than a heap of rubbish. The shake was so violent, that it threw people down on their knees, or their faces, as they were running about for shelter. The ground heaved and swelled like a rolling sea, and several houses still standing, were shuffled and moved some yards out of their places. A whole street is said to be twice as broad now as before; and in many places the earth would crack, and open, and shut, quick and fast. Of which openings, two or three hundred might be seen at a time; in some whereof, the people were swallowed up; others, the closing earth caught by the middle, and pressed

to death; in others, the heads only appeared, The larger openings swallowed up houses; and out of some would issue whole rivers of waters, spouted up a great height into the air, and threatening a deluge to that part the earthquake spared. The whole was attended with stenches and offensive smells, the noise of falling mountains at a distance, &c. and the sky in a minute's time, was turned dull and reddish, like a glowing oven. Yet, as great a sufferer as Port Royal was, more houses were left standing therein, than on the whole island beside. Scarce a planting house, or sugar work was left standing in all Jamaica. A great part of them were swallowed up, houses, people, trees, and all at one gape: in lieu of which afterwards, appeared great pools of water, which when driven up, left nothing but sand, without any mark that ever tree or plant had been thereon. Above twelve miles from the sea, the earth gaped and spouted out, with a prodigious force, vast quantities of water into the air: yet the greatest violences were among the mountains and rocks and it is a general opinion, that the nearer the mountains, the greater the shake; and that the cause thereof lay there. Most of the rivers were stopped up for twenty-four hours, by the falling of the mountains, till swelling up, they found themselves new tracts and channels, tearing up in their passage trees, &c. After the great shake, those people who escaped, got on board ships in the harbor, where many continued above two months; the shakes all that time being so violent, and coming so thick, sometimes two or three in an hour, accompanied with frightful noises like a ruffling wind, or a hollow rumbling thunder, with brimstone blasts, that they durst not come ashore. The consequences of the earthquake was a general sickness, from the noisome vapors belched forth, which swept away above 3000 persons.

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After the detail of these horrible convulsions, the reader will have but little curiosity left, for the less considerable phenomena of the earthquake at Lima, in 1687, described by Fa. Alvarez de Toledo, wherein above 5000 persons were destroyed; this being of the vibratory kind, so that

the bells in the church rung of themselves: or that at Batavia in 1699, by Witzen: that in the north of England in 1703, by Mr. Thoresby: or, lastly, those in New England in 1663 and 1670, by Dr. Mather.

DIALOGUE

Between Philocles and Horatio, meeting accidentally in the fields, concerning Virtue and Pleasure.

From the Pennsylvania Gazette, No. 84, June 23, 1730.

Philocles. MY friend Horatio! I am very glad to see you; prithee how came such a man as you alone? and musing too? What misfortune in your pleasures has sent you to philosophy for relief.

Horatio. You guess very right, my dear Philocles: We pleasure-hunters are never without them; and yet, so enchanting is the game, we cannot quit the chace. How calm and undisturbed is your life, how free from present embarrassments and future cares, I know you love me, and look with compassion upon my conduct: shew me then the path which leads up to that constant and invariable good, which I have heard you so beautifully describe, and which you seem so fully to possess.

Phil. There are few men in the world I value more than you, Horatio! for amidst all your foibles, and painful pursuits of pleasure, I have oft observed in you an honest heart, and a mind strongly bent towards virtue. I wish, from my soul, I could assist you in acting steadily the part of a reasonable creature: for, if you would not think it a paradox, I should tell you I love you better than you do yourself.

Hor. A paradox indeed! better than I do myself! when I love my dear self so well, that I love every thing else for my own sake.

Phil. He only loves himself well, who rightly and judiciously loves himself.

Hor. What do you mean by that, Philocles! You men of reason and virtue are always dealing in mysteries, though

you laugh at them when the church makes them. I think he loves himself very well and very judiciously too, as you call it, who allows himself to do whatever he pleases.

Phil. What, though it be to the ruin and destruction of that very self which he loves so well! That man alone loves himself rightly, who procures the greatest possible good to himself through the whole of his existence; and so pursues pleasure as not to give for it more than it is worth..

Hor. That depends all upon opinion. Who shall judge what the pleasure is worth? Suppose a pleasing form of the fair kind strikes me so much, that I can enjoy nothing without the enjoyment of that one object. Or, that pleasure in general is so favorite a mistress, that I will take her as men do their wives, for better, for worse; minding no consequences, nor regarding what is to come. Why should I not do it?

Phil. Suppose, Horatio! that a friend of yours entered into the world, about two and twenty, with a healthful vigorous body, and a fair plentiful estate of about five hundred pounds a year; and yet, before he had reached thirty, should, by following his pleasures, and not, as you say, duly regarding consequences, have run out of his estate, and disabled his body to that degree, that he had neither the means nor capacity of enjoyment left; nor any thing else to do but wisely shoot himself through the head to be at rest: what would you say to this unfortunate man's conduct? Is it wrong by opinion or fancy only? Or is there really a right and wrong in the case? Is not one opinion of life and action juster than another? Or one sort of conduct preferable to another? Or, does that miserable son of pleasure appear as reasonable and lovely a being in your eyes, as a man, who by prudently and rightly gratifying his natural passions, had preserved his body in full health, and his estate entire, and enjoyed both to a good old age, and then died with a thankful heart for the good things he had received, and with an entire submission to the will of him who first called him into being. Say, Horatio! are these men equally wise and happy? And is every thing to be

measured by mere fancy and opinion, without considering whether that fancy or opinion be right?

Hor. Hardly so neither, I think; yet sure the wise and good author of nature could never make us to plague us. He could never give us passions, on purpose to subdue and conquer them; nor produce this self of mine, or any other self, only that it may be denied; for, that is denying the works of the great Creator himself. Self-denial then, which is what I suppose you mean by prudence, seems to me not only absurd, but very dishonorable to that supreme wisdom and goodness which is supposed to make so ridiculous and contradictory a creature, that must be always fighting with himself in order to be at rest, and undergo voluntary hardships in order to be happy: are we created sick, only to be commanded to be sound? Are we born under one law, our passions, and yet bound to another, that of reason? Answer me, Philocles, for I am warmly concerned for the honor of nature, the mother of us all.

Phil. I find Horatio, my two characters have frighted you; so that you decline the trial of what is good, by reason: and had rather make a bold attack upon Providence; the usual way of you gentlemen of fashion, who, when, by living in defiance of the eternal rules of reason, you have plunged yourselves into a thousand difficulties, endeavor to make yourselves easy, by throwing the burden upon nature; you are, Horatio, in a very miserable condition indeed; for you say, you cannot be happy if you control your passions; and you feel yourself miserable by an unrestrained gratification of them; so that here is evil, irremediable evil either way.

Hor. That is very true, at least it appears so to me; pray what have you to say, Philocles, in honor of nature or Providence; methinks, I am in pain for her: How do you rescue her? poor lady!

Phil. This, my dear Horatio, I have to say, that what you find fault with and clamor against, as the most terrible evil in the world, self-denial, is really the greatest good, and the highest self-gratification: If indeed you use the