paradise such as I can neither describe nor you conceive;—­precious woods, fruits, drugs, and what not—­boundless wealth, in one word—­waiting for them to send it all down the waters of the mighty river Amazon, enriching us here in the Old World, and enriching themselves there in the New.  If they would only go and use these gifts of God, instead of neglecting them as they have been doing for now three hundred years, they would be a blessing to the earth, instead of being—­that which they have been.

God grant, my dear child, that these poor people may take the warning that has been sent to them; “The voice of God revealed in facts,” as the great Lord Bacon would have called it, and see not only that God has bidden them leave the place where they are now, but has prepared for them, in their own land, a home a thousand times better than that in which they now live.

But you ask, How ought they to have known that an earthquake would come?

Well, to make you understand that, we must talk a little about earthquakes, and what makes them; and in order to find out that, let us try the very simplest cause of which we can think.  That is the wise and scientific plan.

Now, whatever makes these earthquakes must be enormously strong; that is certain.  And what is the strongest thing you know of in the world?  Think . . .

Gunpowder?

Well, gunpowder is strong sometimes:  but not always.  You may carry it in a flask, or in your hand, and then it is weak enough.  It only becomes strong by being turned into gas and steam.  But steam is always strong.  And if you look at a railway engine, still more if you had ever seen—­which God forbid you should—­a boiler explosion, you would agree with me, that the strongest thing we know of in the world is steam.

Now I think that we can explain almost, if not quite, all that we know about earthquakes, if we believe that on the whole they are caused by steam and other gases expanding, that is, spreading out, with wonderful quickness and strength.  Of course there must be something to make them expand, and that is heat.  But we will not talk of that yet.

Now do you remember that riddle which I put to you the other day?—­“What had the rattling of the lid of the kettle to do with Hartford Bridge Flat being lifted out of the ancient sea?”

The answer to the riddle, I believe, is—­Steam has done both.  The lid of the kettle rattles, because the expanding steam escapes in little jets, and so causes a lid-quake.  Now suppose that there was steam under the earth trying to escape, and the earth in one place was loose and yet hard, as the lid of the kettle is loose and yet hard, with cracks in it, it may be, like the crack between the edge of the lid and the edge of the kettle itself:  might not the steam try to escape through the cracks, and rattle the surface of the earth, and so cause an earthquake?