Births  Marriages  Deaths  &c. &c.

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1845 continued

and so washed it away. That they had considerable occasion for alarm cannot be disputed, and what may easily be referred to natural causes, and those not very recondite either) would to persons so inexperienced as our community, appear mysterious and awful. On going out of doors, in the morning we saw that a considerable portion of earth had been detached from the side of the hill, but to what extent we could not then ascertain. The place in question was situated at the head of a ravine which debouched into the sea. The rain mixing with the falling earth (which is of a clayey nature) brought it to the consistency of thick mud but sufficiently liquified to glide very slowly down the inclined plane of the valley. Nothing with which it came in contact could resist its force. The large trees at the head of the ravine, and immense pieces of rocks, were borne slowly but unresistingly along about three hundred cocoanut trees were torn up by the roots and swept into the sea. So tenacious was this heterogeneous stream that some of the cocoanut trees, from forty to fifty feet in height, after being displaced from their original situation remained in an upright position some minutes, and when they fell it was many yards from the spot on which they had come to maturity. A considerable portion of this aquatic lava (for indeed its appearance had a distant resemblance to the molten streams of an active volcano) had reached the sea before daylight & when some of our people ventured to the edge of the precipice, they found to their dismay the boat houses, and boats left there had disappeared.