CHAPTER III--VOLCANOS.
You want to know why the Spaniards in Peru and Ecuador should have expected an earthquake.
Because they had had so many already.

The shaking of the ground in their country had gone on perpetually, till they had almost ceased to care about it, always hoping that no very heavy shock would come; and being, now and then, terribly mistaken.
For instance, in the province of Quito, in the year 1797, from thirty to forty thousand people were killed at once by an earthquake.

One would have thought that warning enough: but the warning was not taken: and now, this very year, thousands more have been killed in the very same country, in the very same way.
They might have expected as much.

For their towns are built, most of them, close to volcanos--some of the highest and most terrible in the world.

And wherever there are volcanos there will be earthquakes.