minutes all the buildings in the city, great and
small, public and private, were heaps of ruins,
burying with them those inhabitants who had
not been quick enough in escaping to the
squares. Then succeeded a moment's calm,
as when the heavy ordnance has opened the
battle, and the lighter, but more numerous,
musketry prepares to follow. Soon it began again,
and the houseless homeless inhabitants counted
two hundred distinct shocks within the following
twenty-four hours. These shocks continued
until the February of the following year,
and were computed at four hundred and fifty in
all. On this occasion the port of Callao sank
quite down below the level of the sea. Nothing
was left standing, save a piece of wall belonging
to the fort of Santa Cruz, on which twenty-two
persons contrived to save themselves. Of
the twenty-three ships then in port, nineteen
were wholly sunk, and the remaining four
carried a considerable distance inland. Of the
four thousand inhabitants, which the port of
Callao then numbered, only two hundred
survived. In Lima, thirteen hundred dead bodies
were excavated from the ruins, exclusive of
great numbers of maimed, who afterwards died
of their hurts. Commander Wilkes, of the
United States exploring expedition of 1849, was
able in that year to define the site of the old
port of Callao beneath the sea.

So much for Lima. Let us next take the
case of Caraccas, chief city of the Republic of
Venezuela.

Ascension Day, 1812, rose fair and bright in
that city. The air was calm—the sky unclouded:
it is an error to suppose that earthquakes are
usually accompanied, or preceded, by any
threatening appearance of the elements. Large
numbers of the inhabitants were at church,
in attendance on the services of the day.
Suddenly, the bells tolled without touch of
mortal hand: this was the first intimation of
the earthquake, which, almost simultaneously,
was upon the unhappy people. The movement
of the earth—as in the late widespread
catastrophe—was from north to south, with
transverse jerks from east to west. These cross
agitations of the surface, occurring with
extreme rapidity, instantly prostrated everything
animate and inanimate. The inhabitants were
unable to crawl to the church doors, and those
vast churches, which are characteristic of all
South American cities, from the largest to the
smallest, descended in ruins around them. Ten
thousand persons are said to have been killed in
the churches alone. The churches of La Trinadad
and Alta Gracia, more than one hundred and
fifty feet in height, with naves supported by
pillars of twelve and fifteen feet in diameter,
were reduced to masses of ruin little more
than a man's height. In the barracks, a
regiment of soldiers had just been drawn up
under arms, ready to form part of a procession
that was to take place after divine service.
Scarcely a man of them was left. And all this
was the work of a single minute. From the
first tolling of a bell to the falling of the last
stone of the city of Caraccas, one minute
only elapsed. Many thousand persons were
maimed and wounded, for whom there was no
shelter, no medicine, no food, scarcely a drop of
water. There were not even implements where-
with to extricate them from the ruins which
lay upon them. The survivors dug out with their
fingers two thousand of their crushed fellow-
citizens, who had still some life remaining
in them. The shock had broken the pipes
conveying water; the falling in of the earth
had choked up the springs which supplied
them; there were no utensils in which to carry
water from the river. The wounded and sick
were carried to the river's bank, and there left
under such protection as the foliage afforded.
The night, we are told, rose calm and serene;
the round full moon shone over the sad labours
of the survivors. Mothers still carried their
dead children about, refusing to believe that life
had entirely fled. Troops of relatives and friends
sought for missing ones, up and down streets
now to be traced only by long lines of ruins.
A sterner duty yet remained. Twelve thousand
dead bodies lay around, and decomposition,
within the tropics, may be said to begin at
the moment of death. There were no means
of digging graves; the bodies must be burnt,
and that at once. Bands of citizens were
set apart for this duty. Vast piles of timber
from the ruins of their homes were raised at
frequent intervals; bodies of fathers, husbands,
wives, children, were laid on them; and soon
the whole sky was lighted with these awful
flames. This lasted for several days, during
which the survivors strictly devoted themselves
to religious exercises. Some sang hymns;
others confessed crimes of which they had never
been suspected; numbers made what
compensation was in their power.

Narratives as sad could be taken from
Santiago (1730); Riobamba, near Quito (1797);
Concepcion (1835); New Granada (1837).
Caraccas soon rose from its ruins, and is now a
handsome city of some fifty thousand inhabitants.
As far as accounts inform us, it has
escaped the catastrophe of 1868.

Up to the present time, scientific witnesses
assure us that little faith is to be reposed
in those appearances which superstition
commonly connects with earthquakes. One
scientific person indeed—for as such we must
account a professor of mathematics in the
University of Lima, then the most famous seat of
learning on the whole of the American
continent—published, in 1727, a work entitled
L'Horloge Astronomique des Tremblemens de
Terre, or Astronomical Dial of the Earthquakes,
in which he marked out the fatal hours in
which they might be apprehended. But, as we
have already seen, it did not help towards the
saving of his fellow-citizens during the frequent
attacks to which Lima has been subjected. In
truth, earthquakes occur indifferently at all
hours of the twenty-four, and at all periods of
the year. The circumstances and surroundings
which accompany them on some occasions, are