The Sun.
London, England, 1841-03-02 00:00:00

MOUNT ARARAT.

AN OFFICIAL ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT
EARTHQUAKE, DRAWN UP BY MAJOR
VOSKOBOINIKOF, OF THE IMPERIAL RUS-
SIAN ENGINEERS.
kFrJrn the St. Petersburgh Gazette.)
The earthquake, which changed in a few mo-
ments the entire aspect of the country in the neigh-
bourhood of Mount Ararat, commenced on the
20th of June (Russian, or old style), 1840, at
about 45 minutes after 6 in the evening. Re-
peated, but in:ermittent, shocks, which seemed to
come from the mountain, gave to the earth a move-
ment resembling waves, which continued for about
two minutes. The first four and most formidable
shocks, which were accompanied by a subterraneous
sound, proceeding in the direction of east-north-
east, have left on the summits of hills and bottoms
of valleys within the range of the agitation, traces
which will not soon disappear, and which the eye
of the scientific observer will recognize after many
ages shall have passed away.
It was at the same time observed, that numerous
rents or fissures took place on the banks of the
Araxes and the Karassu, from the source of the
latter to its confluence with the Arpatchai, on all
the spots where the banks of those rivers arc some-
what elevated. These fissures, which were parallel
to the course of the streams, ploughed the earth to
the distanee of a verst from the beds of the rivers,
and, in accordance with the movement given to thesoil
by the shocks, they were seen every moment to open
and shut. There also occurred a great number of vio-
lent explosions from the bottoms of holes like little
craters, which opening and shutting in the same
way as fissures, spouted out torrents of water, and
cast up immense quantities of pebbles and gravel.
The waters of the Araxes were so violently agitated,
that they rose over both banks, now causing inun-
dation, then sinking again into the centre of the
bed, which thus appeared concave. According to
the accounts of the people of the country, several
parts of the river became dry, while at other parts
the body of the stream rose to a great height, mak-
ing a noise like the sound of boiling water. Tile
local auihorities took care to verify these facts,
which were related by a number of eye-witnesses,
and several circumstances leave no doubt if the
correctness of their statements. At :he end of Au-
gust there were still to be seen fissures here and
there in the bed of the river, which might have
absorbed the water, while it might have been thrown
up from others.
During these awful moments terror and desola-
tion reigned everywhere to a great distance around
Mount Ararat. The Persian town of Maku, and
Beiazeth, the chief town of a Turkish Paeludie,
also suffered from the earthquake. Its sueee:-s:ve
shocks convulsed in a few minutes the earth as far se
Shuss and Tabris on the one side, and to Tiflis on
the other. But its ravages extended chiefly over
the Russian territory. The ancient and venerable
monument of St. James, and the village of Acorhi,
with its 200. houses and 1,000 inhabitants, situated
on the skirts of Mount Masis, at the foot of the
Great Ararat, were entirely destroyed by the im-
mense masses of rock which were detached from the
summit of the mountain, and by the colossal gla-
ciers accumulated during an incalculable series of
ages in that region of eternal snow, which those
rocks brought with them in their descent.
In the cantons of Erivan, Sharur, Nakhichevan,
and Ordubat, nearly all the houses have been en-
tirely destroyed. In Nakhichevan two Armenian
churches, five mosques, 779 houses, and 25 shops
were quite ruined. In the district of the same
name, including the canton of Ordubat, the num-
ber of edifices destroyed has been found to amount
to 2,436 houses, one church, two mosques, and 17
mills, leaving out of the account 1,095 houses, nine
churches, five mosques, and 15 mills, which were
more or less seriously damaged. In the canton of
Sharur the earthquake threw down 3,135 houses,
and 75 mills. In the same canton, on the left of
the river Araxes, where its banks are somewhat
elevated, land-slips took place, which carried away
several villages, and the adjoining corn-fields. Most
fortunately the catastrophe occurred before sunset,
which is doubtless the cause that the number of
victims, the inhabitants of Acorhi excepted, was
less considerable than might have been expected.
With that exception, the number is limited to
merely 49 individuals in the two districts of Erivan
and Nakhichevan, exclusive of seventeen seriously
wounded.
The influence of the earthquake on all the wells
within the two districts mentioned was very temark-
able. In the canton of Nakhichevan upwards of
30 springs were dried up for some time ; some con-
tinued even several days after the catastrophe to yield
only thick and whitish-coloured water ; others, on
the contrary, became more abundant than they had
previously been ; and in the vicinity of several of
the latter new springs made their appearance. Thus
the volume of water from the springs of Karassu
and Chapan, near the village of Sadarak, is more
than double what it was ; and a new current of
water, which first issued forth at the time of the
earthquake, still flows from a cleft in Mount Gindil.
At Karagasanlu, a poor village situate at the
confluence of the rivers Arpatchai and Araxes, the
earthquake was observed in all its terrific grandeur.
Terrified by the first shock, and stunned by a noise
like the rolling of thunder, the inhabitants had no
sooner raised their eyes to the summit of the Ararat,
and beheld the direction of the detached masses of
rock, than a second shock overthrew their clay huts.
The whole village disappeared amidst an immense
cloud of dust ; at the same time the earth alternately
opened and closed around them, and numerous
columns of water spouting up in the air from the
apertures, threw into the fields sand and pebbles
which had been dislodged from the bottom of those
frightful gulfs. The unfortunate inhabitants fled
in dismay from the places of their birth.
h is difficult to afford any idea of the scene which
presented itself in the narrow valley of Acorlii.
The masses of rock, ice, and snow, detached by
the first shock from the summit of the Ararat and
its lateral points, were thrown, at one single bound,
from a height of 6,000 feet to the bottom of the
valley, where they lay scattered over an extent of
seven versts.
At first not the slightest traces of the monastery
or the village were perceptible ; but gradually the
snow and ice began to melt, and the mass of debris,
losing its adhesion, separated and crumbled away
in various directions. A portion was carried down
by the slope of the valley as far as the banks of the
Karassu, with such rapidity, that huge masses of
ice preserved entire and immense fragments of rock,
were in the space of a few minutes hurled to a
distance of 20 versts from the point where they had
fallen.
This happened at nine in the morning of the
24th of June. Torrents of clayey mud, of a
whitish colour, issued from the sides of the great
mars of debris, which remained immoveable, inun-
dating and devastating the fields and meadows from
that point to the banks of the Karassu. These
torrents were so great, that between the mountains
bounding the valley of Acorhi and the banks of the
river the ground was inundated to the extent of
twelve versts in width.
The sudden formation of these torrents of mud,
and the rapidity of their movement, present an ex-
traordinary phenomenon. It may be conjectured
that masses of compact clay had been formed,
apparently by volcanic evaporation, at the summit
of Mount Ararat, on the porphyroide trachytes.
These masses, which crushed everything in their
descent, were transformed, at the first contact
with the water produchd by the melted snow and
ice, into a muddy matter, which afterwards flowed
along the slope of the valley. Perhaps, too,
being carried along by these waters, like other
debris, these masses were dissolved whilst the
torrent was rolling them towards the plain. Be
this as it may, one of these torrents of mud, falling
into the Karassu, forced that river to alter its
course. A vast number of mutilated human bo-
dies, frightful evidences of the disaster of Acorhi,
were hurled into the Karassu ; so that the waters
of the river were for a long time unfit for use in
:coking or drinking.
By the sth of July these torrents had entirely
disappeared ; but the valley of Acorhi has assumed
quite a new aspect. It has become broader at its
upper part, because the soil is there more elevated
than it formerly was, and the boundary of eternal
snow on the Ararat appears lower. Two springs
which used formerly to be remarked at a short dis-
tance from the monastery, now issue from among
the debris of the rock covering that part of the
valley, and indicate the spot where the venerable
edifice stood. In the same way we can conjecture
the situation once occupied by a small meadow on
twhielicshkiratts
the
mountain
of opposite r
catastrophe
e monastery,
i n ha:
momentthe

bited by a nomade tribe of thirty families, all of
whom perished. The meadow is now covered with
a deep stratum of clay. On a piece of ground el:-
tending from the monastery to"the village of A eothi,
where formerly were to be seen cultivated fields and
gardens, we at present find a labyrinth of hillocks
of a conical form, composed of fragments of ruck,
and covering fragments of glaciers, which, in con-
sequence of being thus protected against the influ-
ence of the atmosphere, are not yet melted. These
hillocks are furrowed by numerous fissures, and
have cavities full of water containing vitriol; they
will probably disappear when the ice which they
cover shall be dissolved.
The stratum of clay where it has buried the
village is comparatively inconsiderable. In the
hope of finding articles of value, the Curds soon
began to explore the ruins. The excavations they
have made, to the depth of a sagene, expose to view
the rafters of the cottages still -resting on the ruins
of these habitations. Here and there some frag-
ments of the inferior part of the walls remain up-
right. The interior is everywhere filled with lumps
of ice and blocks of rock—a proof that the village
was not destroyed by a torrent of debris rolling and '
sliding down the side of the mountain like an ava-
lanche, but was crushed by a mass of matter, which
having been hurled through space descended per•
pendicularly on the spot.
After the great concussion, the effects of which
were so dreadful, distinctly felt shocks occurred at
intervals until the 28th of July ; they afterwards
diminished in force, but they did not entirely cease
in the district of Sharur until the Ist of Sep-
tember, and, though .very feeble towards the close
of that period, they were still accompanied by a
slight subterraneous noise.
The shocks which occurred in the canton of
Nakhichevan, between the 21st and the 28th of
June, overthrew the buildings which the first earth-
quake had shaken. The heaviest shocks which
were afterwards observed occurred on the 14th of
July, at 3 Aar., in the quarantin of Igttr, and on
the 25th of July, at 3 and 10 A.M., and at 5 P.M.,
in the canon of Surmalinsk.

SPIRIT of the PUBLIC JOURNALS

FRO3I THE EVENING PAPERS OF YESTERDAY.
(From Cie Globe.)

Whenever the Tories happen to be in a small mino•
rity upon a division of the House of Commons, tie
Conservative organs of the Press amuse themselves
and their readers by endeavouring to show that the
defeat their ra ty has sustained is, in fact, a victory.
It may be very, satisfactory to the patrons of the
Standard to be carried throuth a series of statistics
sue .1 " pay; s," '• a',sentecs" desettrs," :he Irish
tail: and 1o;;e-},e1lers," until they are brought to the
colt frutaVe eotielusion that a tia.j.rity of ti, e against
flie,a is one of thirty•tvo in their favour; but a; l'ing
as the simple yet inflexible rules of the unerring
Co. ker continue to prevail, it will be impossible to
mal e 294 a greater number than 299, however hard
the Tory scribes may labour to prove it so. It is really
am :sing to not cc the various ingenious devices to
wh.ch Conservative calcul itors re;ort, in order to
" lay the fla tering unction to their souls" that the
sta e of numbers in the recent division was the result of
an thing rather than an expression of the sense of the
House of Cornmons,—which is the obvious and of ly
solutian of t' --e triumph of the Government. The Oppo-
sition papers go into absurd and puerile details about
casualties having kept away from the House on the
eventful night such and such of their friends—wherca-,
if these casualties are to be taken into account, it might
probably be shown that the greater number of absent
members would have voted on the side of Ministers.
There is something particularly cool in the proposi-
tion to deduct 40 front the majority as about the num-
ber of Ministers and place-holders who voted on Thurs-
day last,—the objection taken to them being grounded,
it is presumed, on interest ; but, if there be 40 who
voted holding place, it would be curious to ascertain
how many were, by the hope qf place, induced to swell
the minority. Taking it for granted, at a moderate
calculation, that for every office filled by the Whigs
there are on an average at least three greedy expectants
among the Tories, surely, if 40 place holders are to be
struck off on one side, 120 place kunters ought to be
struck off on the ether.

(From the Standard.)

•
The two grounds of apology for Lord Morpeth's
Bill are, fiist, th,t the franchise qualification is un-
certain in Ireland ; and, secondly, that the consti-
tuencies arc in a declining state, and in danger of
being further diminished if purged of fraudulent votes.
The falichood of both pretexts was triumphantly de-
monstrated in the four days' debate. The franchise
qualification was proved to be as certain in Ireland as
in Great Britain, if words mean the same thing on the
one side of St. George's Channel as on the otlit2r.
It is nothing to the purpose to say that a few Whig-
Radical 1 iwyers, 12vated to the bench from the obscurer
racks of the bar for factious purposes, interprt t the law
differently from all the Judges of England and the
great majority of the Irish Judges. The law is still
the same. The law was net ilt2red ether as to cer-
tainty or effect by the corrupt misinterpretation of
the Judges of the first Charles or the second James ;
two and Iwo make four, though knaves may try
to mislead us, or fools may mislead themselves
by saying that they make five. It is a remarkable
fact, that ea%ry English 1 iwyer, who spoke in the
debate, from Sir William Follett downwards,
laughed t ) scorn the pretence that the: e could
he any honest or rational doubt as to the Irish fran-
chise qualification, and the only Irish lawyers who
affected, how( ver faintly, to defend such a doubt were
Mr. Pigot the Precursor, and Mr. Daniel O'Connell
the Repealer. The motives of these rersons are easily
understood.

(From the Courier.)
Considerable attention has been devoted of late years
to the subject of lunatic asylums, and generally the pub-
lic Lave followed with much interest the course of those
improvements in the treatment of insane and unhappy
objects, and in hospital discipline, which have honour-
ably characterised the present time and the many phi'an-
thropic persons by whom promoted. It was therefore
natural that those who had taken leading parts in per-
fecting new institutions and reforming dell etiva modes
of practice, where falling within the scope of their du-
ties or observation, should in the progress of their la-
bours be led to inquire into the systems prevailing in the
noble and older foundations of the country, with a view
to correct such abuses as might have crept through time
into the general management, and of ameliorating, or,
it need were, of replacing, by more enlightened modes
of treatment, the special methods established when the
moral phenomena of the lamentable disease of lunacy
were more imperfectly understood only, or when, in
fact, it was treated almost exclusively as the province
of medical art and medicine, to the neglect of the appli-
ance of those moral agents, which are now found so ef-
fective to the end, of kind treatment, soothing language,
gentle demeanour, gradual weaning of the less ex-
cited brain from the particular origin of irritability and
imperceptible restoration at length, as symptoms became
less disturbing and lucid intervals snore frequent, of the
mental faculties. Under the influence of such feelings
and desires, it wa', therefore, that the state of the
Royal Hospital of Bethlem attracted the notice of certain
inquiring and benevolent minds
.among the governors
themsel%ee, as wed as among the public, and this war
the less remarkable, as, so far back as 1814, the result of
a Parliamentary inquiry disclosed the existence of revolt-
irg barbarities in regular practice there upon the most un-
protected am( unfortunate of all objects. It is net
with the intention of now throwing discredit on the
management that w e dllude to the disgusting Ce-
tails embodied in that Report, such as we find them
quot ,d in a very able pamphlet of Six Letters ti the
Presdeat of Bethlem Hosp:tal, on the Management
of that Establishment," lately published by Simpkin and
Marshall. We are quite of opinion with the candid
author, that " A perusal of the List of Governors is alone
sufficient to satisfy the most prejudiced objector, that no
abuse will be wilfully upheld ; and that if Bt thlem does
not take that rank in public estimation to which, by its
wealth, its power, and its respectability, it is entitled, it
is because of the sluggish nature of its constitution,
and the unhesitating belief of its members that all is
rightly done when all is rightly intended." But it
cannot be denied that there has been, and still is, pro-
bably, much wanting to promote the more extensive
usefulness of the Hospital.

STRANGE BRIDEGROOM.-4 couple presented
themselves before the cura6e of Wrexham Church- on the
morning of Tuesday last, to be joined together in the h sly
bonds of matrimony. The service had proceeded to that
part of the ceremony whore the minister calls upon the
bridegroom to say after him, " I, A. B. take thee, C. D.,
to be my wedded wife," when the man, instead of re-
peating the words, said, '6 I wull, I'll have her."
The minister remonstrated with him, and told him
to repeat the exact words after him, as above men
tioned. The man, however persisted in his manner
of reply, and " I wull, I'll have her." The clerk,
thinking he had some impediment in his speech, whispered
to him softly to repeat the words after the Curate, but
without ,-4Fect. The naa contilue I to reply as before;
and the Cs 'ate, who said he was an obstinate fellow, re-
fused to proceed with the ceremony. The parties came
from Church unmarried. The man is a potter, and lives
in the Walks, Wrexham.—Cantarvon Herald.

Mrs. COCkerell, now the Countess of Eolinton,
was the widow of Captain Howe Cockerell, whom she
first met on lur passage to India, whither the Captain was
also going to push hie fortune. He arrived at the period
of the great failures in Calcutta, and through his family
connections was appointed to wind up the affairs of some
of the great houses; a service is which he reali ei
160,0001. in a few years. He died shcr,ly after his return
to England, leaving his young and beautiful wife the life
int rest of his firtune, and 40,000/. at her absolute dis-
posal.—Glasgow Chronicle.
Mr. Button, gardener, at Caistor, had new
po-
atnes to dinner on New Year's Day.