ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS IN 1737.
Ireland also lies near the axis of this great volcanic area, reaching
from the Canaries to Iceland, and it has been many times in the past the
seat of disturbance. The ancient annals contain numerous accounts of
eruptions, preceded by volcanic action. In 1490, at the Ox Mountains,
Sligo, one occurred by which one hundred persons and numbers of cattle
were destroyed; and a volcanic eruption in May, 1788, on the hill of
Knocklade, Antrim, poured a stream of lava sixty yards wide for
thirty-nine hours, and destroyed the village of Ballyowen and all the
inhabitants, save a man and his wife and two children. ("Amer. Cyclop.,"
art. Ireland.)
While we find Lisbon and Ireland, east of Atlantis, subjected to these
great earthquake shocks, the West India Islands, west of the same
centre, have been repeatedly visited in a similar manner. In 1692
Jamaica suffered from a violent earthquake. The earth opened, and great
quantities of water were cast out; many people were swallowed up in
these rents; the earth caught some of them by the middle and squeezed
them to death; the heads of others only appeared above-ground.
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