A WELLINGTON EARTHQUAKE THIRTY YEARS AGO.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIV, Issue 183, 2 August 1879, Page 4

A WELLINGTON EARTHQUAKE THIRTY YEARS AGO.

A correspondent sends the following extract from a lecture on New Zealand, delivered recently by W. Lee, Esq., member of the Geographical Society, London, being the penonal experience of the lecturer in New Zealand srme thirty years ago. After telling bis audience that "at the time the forests of New Zealand abounded with wild pigs, oxen, and wild beasts," he goes on to describe an earthquake which he declares took place in Wellington as follows : — " • * • Abont 4 o'clock in the morning I was aroused from my slumbers by a violent shaking of the bed in which I lay. • * • Putting my head over the side of the bnnk, and looking down into the room below, 1 conld peroeive that there was some motion. In • few seconds down came the chimney with a crash. I was instantly down my ladder and outside the door, and was soon joined by my shivericg and half naked companions. I shall never forget the feeling of that moment as I gazed on those grand old mountains, with all their magnificent forests rolling to and fro like drunken men. My mind was completely crushed under the sense of my own nothingness, and I lay like a worm on the ground, stunned by the awful display of the omnipotence of Him wbo could thus cause the foundations of the earth to shake. The tremulous motion of the earth continued for twenty-four hours. It was sometimes so slight as to need care to discover it ; but now and then was heard underground a growl like a roar of thunder, and then the motion would be so violent as to compel us to lie down on the ground or to hold on by some tree or post. Presently we took refuge in our schooner. Strange to say, we felt the shocks as much on the sea as on the land. The force of the earthquake did not seem to be deadened by the water, and our little vessel trembled like a leaf. At Wellington we found the whole town in confusion. One wall of the brick barracks had been thaken down, and several houses in the place were more or less dilapidated, while there was hardly a chimney standing. A solemn fast had been proclaimed, and the people were ss sober as if just escaped from some fearful fire. The Colonial Government feared that the country would be depopulated, and they laid an embargo on the vessels in port. But the terrors of the earthquakes exceeded the terrors of the law, and a number of people chartered a vessel to carry them from a place apparently doomed to destruction. Far several weeks scarcely a day passed without an occasional shock. We returned to our home, and took up our dwelling in one of the cowsheds, the walls of which

being composed of large piles of timber driven into (he ground could cot be shaken down. We eoou became accustomed to this awful phenomenon, and then at length began to turn the shock e to account in the duties of oar business. That, in falling timber, it was our custom to cut about one-third away into the tree on the side we wanted it lo fall, and iheD, with axes, chop away (be wood above this elit till we had made a large eloping f aeb called a scar; (he Bupport being to a great extent withdrawn from this side, we had bat to saw a little way behind, when it would coma tumbling down at the first shock of an earthquake. I have seen as many as fifty or sixty giants of the forestsjst&nding thus, half eawn through, waiting to be shaken down, and exhibiting one of the most extraordinary instances of the force of habit in weakening impressions of terror that I have ever experienced,"