One of the first and most memorable was that of 1564 which overthrew
the cities of La Vega and Santiago de los Caballeros. La Vega was at
that time a good sized town with substantial brick houses, and the
masses of masonry strewn about in the thicket which now covers the
site of the old city give evidence of the force of the earthquake. In
1654 and 1673 dwellings and churches in Santo Domingo City were
damaged by lesser shocks, and in 1751 an earthquake wrecked edifices
in the capital, and completely destroyed the old city of Azua and the
town of Seibo. The most recent and perhaps the most disastrous
earthquake was that of 1842 when a violent commotion in the northern
part of the island demolished the cities of Santiago de los Caballeros
on the Dominican side and Cape Haitien on the Haitian side, bringing
death to hundreds of their inhabitants. Since that date there have
been no severe shocks, though, as is the case in other West India
Islands, slight tremblings of the earth are not infrequent. I have
experienced several of such tremblings in Santo Domingo and have never
been able to ward off a kind of creepy feeling when the rattling of
windows and doors indicated their approach and passage.
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