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Chester June 2. 1801.
Dear Sir
I did not think at the time you were so kind on Saturday sevennight last to explain to me the construction of your Earthquake Machine, that I should so soon have had occasion to send you a communication on the subject of Earthquakes; but a smart shock having been felt in this Town a very few hours after my arrival on my journey home, I shall proceed to describe to you all the Facts I have been able to collect respecting it, as I must confess I was not sensible of it myself. It took place about 10 minutes after 1 o'clock in the morning of the 1st day of June, as the Revd Mr. Trevor whose account of it is the most accurate & the most to be relied on, heard the Quarter strike on the Cathedral Church soon after it termination. He describes it as resembling at first the noise of persons jumping violently on the Floors of the Rooms in a part of the House, which as they are situated to the Eastward of that, in which he slept, he justly concludes, & in this all the other accounts agree, that the direction of the Earthquake was from East to West. After this it passed under his own room, shaking the Bed Windows & Furniture most violently, & causing in his own Frame a tremulous sensation, which he emphatically compares to that agitation he once observed in a person under the agonies of death. This he thinks continued for a few seconds, after which it passed away with a rumbling noise louder than thunder, but not resembling it. Mr. Trevor was not sensible of more than one Shock, tho' others fancied they perceivd two, with a short interval between them, but I am inclin'd to suspect that this was merely the continuance of the