At least we will hope that, though they would not learn their lesson till this year, they will learn it now, and will listen to the message which I think Madam How has brought them, spoken in a voice of thunder, and written in letters of flame.
And what is that?
My dear child, if the landlord of our house was in the habit of pulling the roof down upon our heads, and putting gunpowder under the foundations to blow us up, do you not think we should know what he meant, even though he never spoke a word?
He would be very wrong in behaving so, of course: but one thing would be certain,--that he did not intend us to live in his house any longer if he could help it; and was giving us, in a very rough fashion, notice to quit.

And so it seems to me that these poor Spanish Americans have received from the Landlord of all landlords, who can do no wrong, such a notice to quit as perhaps no people ever had before; which says to them in unmistakable words, "You must leave this country: or perish." And I believe that that message, like all Lady Why's messages, is at heart a merciful and loving one; that if these Spaniards would leave the western coast of Peru, and cross the Andes into the green forests of the eastern side of their own land, they might not only live free from earthquakes, but (if they would only be good and industrious) become a great, rich, and happy nation, instead of the idle, and useless, and I am afraid not over good, people which they have been.

For in that eastern part of their own land God's gifts are waiting for them, in a 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.