gases may be discharged in districts remote from any volcanic region. In some instances, we are informed that immediately after severe shocks, the streams and vegetation have proved poisonous to cattle. There were light shocks felt in 1732, 1737 and 1744; but none of these are said to have done any damage beyond throwing down a few stone walls. Thus we find within a century fourteen earthquake periods in New England alone; and in several cases the shocks were numerous, extending over a period of several months. Comparing the small area with the whole region, and remembering that shocks are more frequent in the central, southern and western portions of the country, it is fair to conclude that the merest tithe of those actually occurring could have come under the notice of our ancestors.
The most violent shock ever known in New England came eighteen days after the great Lisbon earthquake of 1755, preceded by a peculiar, rumbling roar. Then came a “rapid, jarring, vibrating motion,” with an upward shock: then a “violent, prodigious shock, as suddenly, to all appearances as a thunderclap breaking upon a house and attended by a great noise.” Then followed a series of “quick and violent concussions, jerks and wrenches, attended by an undulating, waving motion of the whole surface of the ground, not unlike the shaking and quaking of a large bog.”
Several writers give a graphic account of the behavior of the good people of Boston at this juncture. The shock came at a little past four in the morning. Some sprang from their beds and ran into the street; some lay shivering with fear, not daring to rise; others rushed to the windows, and, seeing in the gloom their unclad neighbors rushing about the streets, shrieked aloud that the judgment day was at hand. Others thought that they heard Gabriel’s horn, and fell on their knees, crying for mercy, or fainted away. The boldest feared the crash of tottering houses; children ran about crying for their parents; dogs howled dismally; birds flew aloft with frightened cries; cattle bellowed with fear as they dashed about their pens. Screaming horses struggled in their stalls. Numbers of fish were killed by the shock. Changes were wrought in springs and streams, after the manner of 1727.
The damage done was not so great as might have been expected from the unusual alarm shown. A large number of chimneys in Boston were thrown down; clocks were stopped; a new vane was broken from the market house, the spindle being snapped at a place where it was five inches thick; but we are not told of any serious loss of life or property. The shock extended southward, and was plainly felt along the east side of the Chesapeake, but not on the western shore. The sea wave set in motion travelled southward, and it is supposed to have occasioned the unusual commotion of the water in the West Indies. At St. Martin’s the sea suddenly fell five feet below its level, and then rose six above.
The time of the shock was determined exactly by an accident. Prof. Winthrop, of Cambridge, had placed a long glass tube in his tall clock, as a safe place. This tube, thrown against the pendulum, stopped the clock, which the day before had been adjusted to meridianal noon; and as Prof. Winthrop had compared his watch and clock the night before, he was able to show that the shocks began at eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds after four A.M., November 18, and continued about four and a half minutes.
Eighteen periods of earthquakes are noted in the next fifty-five years; and at one of these, in 1791, nearly one hundred and fifty shocks were felt.
In 1810-11-12, a series of remarkable shocks were felt throughout a large portion of the United States, but with especial force in the central Mississippi valley. The first were noticed near St. Genevieve, but the center of violence seemed to lie around New Madrid, Mo. The shocks became so sharp and frequent that Dr. Robertson was sent out to observe and record them carefully. He kept count up to five hundred, and then abandoned that portion of the work.
The phenomena were much like those of the milder type of earthquakes everywhere. Around New Madrid huge fissures opening in the earth emitted volumes of sand and gas, occasionally spouting water, or sending out bursts of flame. Some of the fissures were six hundred feet long and twenty feet wide. The sand and water was sometimes thrown as high as forty or fifty feet. During the whole period there were unusual disturbances in other regions. On the night of the most violent shocks occurred the great earthquake at Caracas, Venezuela, which destroyed so many thousands. Had the Mississippi region been a very thickly settled one, the loss of life would have been fearful. Upon the upheaval of a new island, Sabrina, in the Azores, to a height of three hundred and twenty feet, and an eruption of the St. Vincent volcano, in the Antilles, the disturbance ceased. It is not safe to assert positively that there was no connection between these phenomena; but there is little probability that there was. They serve rather to show how universal are the subterranean forces with which man must deal. The year 1811 was also marked by a storm of unusual violence, and by the appearance of a brilliant comet. But, as noticed before, efforts to establish any especial connection between such phenomena have not met with any marked success.
These earthquakes were so violent in the river itself as to almost shatter boats in mid-stream. Trees at some distance from the bank were hurled into the water with tremendous force. Flashes of fire and molten matter were thrown to great heights. The explosions seemed like a battery of artillery. Sunken logs and snags were thrown from the deep bottom of the river to a height of thirty feet above the surface. Sulphurous streams dashed from a thousand rents, leaving unfathomable fissures. Great forest trees lashed their heads together, or were snapped off by the shocks. Small islands sank to the bottom of the river. Quantities of coal and charred wood were thrown up; some lying a considerable distance from the fissures that discharged them. Many boats were lost; quite a number of people were buried under falling banks. It was undoubtedly the most violent convulsion in the history of our country. Reelfoot lake, now a noted fishing resort, we are told was formed by this earthquake.
Time would fail us to give an especial notice of the many shocks received since the country has been more widely settled. With a notice of the recent Charleston earthquake this list must be closed.
This convulsion owes its importance rather to its location than to its violence. It was felt over about one-fourth of the entire country, its greatest force being felt along the Atlantic coast from New Haven to Savannah. The area affected was elliptical, and the shock was but little less severe at Atlanta, Georgia, in East Tennessee, and many North and South Carolina regions, than in Charleston itself. It was felt at Charleston at 9:51, August 31, 1886, and reached Toronto, Canada, in four minutes. It did not travel so readily westward as northward.
It is of course impossible to estimate exactly the damage done. A considerable number of important cities
suffered more or less; but the majority were forgotten in the unusual severity at Charleston. The city appeared as though it had been through a siege, or as if a gigantic charge of dynamite had been exploded beneath it. In all directions might be seen heaps of ruins, houses tottering, cracked, twisted—in all stages of destruction. Ever and anon a fresh shock brought down some crumbling edifice with a sullen roar, and a cloud of stifling dust veiled it from view. The night resounded with the screams of terrified fugitives, the tread of hurrying feet, and the groans and cries of the wounded. The parks swarmed with those in search of a place of safety. Hundreds were bruised or maimed by falling stones and timbers; not a few were killed outright; others, crushed in the wrecks, died a lingering death.
Appeals for aid were promptly responded to by all portions of the country. Even those localities which had themselves suffered severely, came to the aid of the city that had been more sorely stricken.
The greatest injury to life was indirect. Only forty-seven people, it is said, were killed outright. But few houses were left safe; and for a considerable time young and old, rich and poor, the feeble and the strong, were out of doors in tents, booths, or such rude shelters as they could hastily erect. The alarm was perpetuated by occasional recurrence of the shocks during several days. The continued exposure and lack of necessaries created a vast deal of sickness; and the deaths thus indirectly occasioned far exceeded those killed outright.
The damage to buildings in Charleston is estimated at $5,000,000. But in comparison with the whole number injured, comparatively few of the houses were shaken completely down. Hundreds were shaken and shattered to the point of falling, and had to be pulled down as unsafe. The shock was just short of a point where it would have made terrible havoc. If violent enough to overthrow the many houses it merely shattered, its victims would have been numbered by thousands, instead of tens. We may be thankful, with Lord North, that things were no worse.
The nature of the shocks varied. In some parts of South Carolina chimneys and brick walls remained upright, but crushed to atoms at the base, as if shattered by a powerful upward concussion; in other locations, evidences of a twisting motion were present; houses were turned partially around, and left almost unharmed. Again, as in most cases in Charleston, the chief movement appeared to be a horizontal one—the upper portions of walls and buildings being thrown down, while the lower suffered little harm. More of these singular effects will be noticed in connection with other shocks. Crevices and fissures were opened; railroad rails bent in a snake-like form; mud, sand, and small stones were thrown out. There was no tidal wave, and artesian wells four hundred feet deep were not disturbed. There was no barometric variation, though the air is said to have suddenly become oppressively hot at the moment of the shock. Some Pennsylvania gas wells diminished, and a geyser in the Yellowstone Park, four years quiet, burst suddenly into action. These we must deem mere coincidences.
As a whole, this has been the most destructive single earthquake in our history, while far inferior in real violence to the convulsions last noticed. For frequency of shocks, and total damage in consequence, the Pacific States far exceed all the rest of the country. Their position with active volcanic regions in Oregon and Washington and Lower California, renders them peculiarly liable to such disturbances. Within the years 1872-1885, inclusive, there were registered seventy-five earthquakes in New England, sixty-six in the Atlantic States, seventy-five in the Mississippi Valley, and two hundred and thirty-seven in the Pacific States.
These facts ought to be conclusive evidence against the belief that, because storms and earthquakes are sometimes simultaneous, the one is in any way responsible for the other. These figures show the fewest shocks in the region
most frequented by tornadoes; while the section never visited by the latter shows more shocks than all the rest combined. Add to these the previous shocks recorded in our history—231—and it is evident that we have our full share of such convulsions.
In respect to earthquakes, our British cousins have been even more fortunate than ourselves. A cursory glance at British geology shows that at a remote age in the past, volcanic action was frequent and violent; but the whole region has long buried or healed the wounds inflicted upon the face of nature by the petulant giants of fire. Now and then there is a premonitory tremor; but the warning seems not to be for the grandchildren of the Druids; and the latter have been lulled to a sense of almost absolute security.
Yet at some periods of the past they have been seriously disturbed, if we may credit the old chroniclers; but their records are so brief, and at times so conflicting, that it is not always easy to determine the extent of the disaster. And it must be remembered that in the dark and middle ages the mass of the people knew absolutely nothing of affairs not in their own immediate neighborhood.
Perhaps the most striking feature of British earthquakes is the fact that, like the shocks in the Vesuvian neighborhood, the area they disturb is very small; it may be, however, that incompleteness of reports is responsible for this apparent peculiarity. Up to the last century but one general shock is recorded; this being the first of which there is definite mention, occurring in 974 A. D. Five others are recorded in the next century, all local.
Perhaps the most violent of the earlier earthquakes was the one which in 1110 shook the region between Shrewsbury and Nottingham, tumbling down many houses and injuring many people. At Nottingham the bed of the river Trent was laid dry and remained so some hours. Probably a large fissure opened temporarily in the channel, allowing the water to escape into subterranean cavities. Three other earthquakes occurred in the Lincolnshire fens in the next thirty-two years, doing considerable damage.
In 1158 mention is made of a most extraordinary earthquake which shook London and vicinity, destroying much property, injuring several people, and causing the Thames to become so low as to be passed on foot. Seven years later there was a general tremor observed throughout all England.
John of Brompton relates a remarkable circumstance in connection with an earthquake in 1179. The ground belonging to the bishop of Durham, at Oxenhall near Darlington, was raised suddenly to a level with the adjacent hills, remaining so from 9 A.M. till sunset, when it fell again, leaving a deep cavity in place of a hill. Three other earthquakes occurred ere the close of the century; the last one, in Somersetshire in 1199, being violent enough to throw men off their feet.
Forty-seven years passed without any further experience of the sort, when a series of severe shocks, especially violent in Kent, overthrew a number of churches and other buildings of the more pretentious sort; and the same thing happened next year, affecting especially London and the Thames Valley. Again, in the year after, Bath and Wells suffered considerably; and two years later St. Albans was shaken.
Of other earthquakes in the next century no especial mention need be made, save of one of unusual violence in 1385. A revolution in Scotland followed, and the superstitious populace, looking backward, concluded that the earthquake had been meant as a warning which they had not been able to interpret. A second shock which
followed the revolution was supposed to express the Divine displeasure at their short-sightedness.
But one shock, though a very general one, is recorded during the next one hundred and sixty-six years. Then in 1551 a slight tremor upset the people’s furniture and dinner pots in a portion of Surrey. Twenty years afterward a severe shock in Herefordshire was accompanied by a landslide. A large portion of a hill slowly descended during two days, turning a half circle as it came, as though on a pivot.
In 1574 a sharp vibration shook northern and western England at the hour for vespers. Suppliants in Norton Chapel were thrown prostrate and fled in terror, believing the dead were rising through the floor. Part of Ruthin Castle was thrown down.
In 1580, April 6, nearly all England was alarmed by a violent shock. The great bell at Westminster rang the alarm; others joined in. Students of the Temple rushed into the streets; stones fell from St. Paul’s; showers of chimneys in the streets maimed several persons; a panic ensued at Christ Church, where two people were killed by falling stones, and several were maimed in the wild rush to escape from the building. Parts of the fortifications at Dover were overthrown; also several churches and castles were damaged. May 1 of the same year the shocks were again felt in Kent, during the night. This is one of the most notable of British earthquakes; it passed eastward through Belgium to Cologne.
But it is needless to pursue the record further. Only two unusual features are presented among the many earthquakes following: one in 1731 was confined to an area six miles by five; and one in 1734 exhibited a peculiar rotary motion, shaking persons in bed around at right angles to their former positions.
Summing up the record, we find that in the 10th century one earthquake is recorded in England; during the 11th, ten; during the 12th, twelve; during the 13th, thirteen; during the 14th, four; during the 15th, one; six in the 16th; twenty in the 17th, and eighty-four in the eighteenth. The present has also had a fair quota. But if we consider the damage to property, or the fatality, we must conclude that no country in the world is so favored in this matter of earthquakes as Great Britain, unless it may be Germany.
Finally, all the disasters of this sort, in both England and the United States, so far as all historic records go, do not equal a single one of the many terrible convulsions recorded in the history of other nations. From the earliest times to the present, we find a constant succession of appalling disasters, many of which are almost beyond the power of comprehension. The most cursory glance at these horrors of the past should render every Anglo-Saxon peculiarly grateful that his lot is not cast in a land so cursed with terrors, and more ready to sympathize with the stranger in his woe.
THE reader will be assured, from the facts given concerning volcanic eruptions, and the earthquakes of Asia Minor mentioned in the former chapter, that great earthquakes are as numerous in Asiatic districts as elsewhere; but beyond the bare fact, little is known of most of these. India has preserved no written history: and China and Japan have been till recently almost inaccessible to Europeans. So while the disturbances there are equal in importance to those of other lands, it is but lately that any definite information has been accessible; and our chief knowledge has come from personal narratives of white settlers and visitors to the islands of the western Pacific. In Japan, there is, to say nothing of numerous volcanoes, strong circumstantial evidence of the frequency of earthquakes in days past. Almost all dwellings are constructed of bamboo and lightest woods, one story high, with screens of paper as partitions: houses of stone are feared, the people preferring to take their chances on a great fire than on an earthquake. The same fact is noticeable
in the Philippines, Moluccas, and adjacent groups. Almost the only stone buildings are those of Spanish and Dutch settlers. China has apparently suffered less; but we learn that in 1556 two entire provinces were laid waste. The extent of the loss of life can not be estimated. The earth vomited ashes and flames, and ten great sea waves occurred in twenty-four hours.
Since European occupation of the East Indies, the convulsions have been frequent and alarming. The city of Manila was completely destroyed, with thousands of people, in 1645. Not one stone remained on another. Severe shocks occurred there again in 1699, 1796, 1825, 1852, and 1863. The last named wrecked the cathedral while filled with worshipers. The loss of property was from $8,000,000 to $10,000,000, or twice that of our Charleston earthquake. Four hundred people were killed. The shock lasted about half a minute, but opened many fissures, emitted volumes of gas and spoilt the river water. Again, in 1880, after some vague or irregular tremblings, there were several violent shocks. There was first experienced a peculiar sense of nausea and faintness, with a feeling of powerlessness or inability to flee. Horses stopped trembling in the streets, “standing with ears erect, with staring eyes, and stiffly extended legs, as though conscious of extraordinary peril.” The natives, heedless of appeals for help, wildly sought their own safety, or knelt devoutly invoking the saints. Clouds of dust filled the air, and heaps of ruin blocked the streets. The terrible hush that prevailed was broken only by an occasional cry for aid, or the crash of a ruined home. Portions of ground between great crevices were raised five or six feet; other parts fell as much. But the confusion rapidly subsided, and occupations of all sorts were resumed. One newspaper, true to the traditional enterprise of the fraternity, dragged its paraphernalia from its ruined building, and went to work in the middle of the street. An American publisher could hardly beat that.
But a region whose earthquakes have attracted greater attention, and have been more carefully noticed by scientific men than those of the eastern archipelago, is to be found along the western slope of the Andes, extending thence into Central America and Northern Venezuela and the West Indies.
Ever since the Spanish conquest, earthquakes have been numerous and violent in this whole region; and judging from the character of the native dwellings, the aborigines were for centuries accustomed to such movements. But it remained for Humboldt, in the last century, to give us a more careful description of some of the greater of these disasters.
Of the preceding disturbances, one of the most notable occurred in 1698, when the crater of the volcano Carguirazo fell in with a great crash during a shock of earthquake, and an area of twenty square miles was covered with mud containing numerous dead fish. A few years later, a similar occurrence north of Quito produced an epidemic of pernicious fevers.
But of the many great convulsions, that of Riobamba, in 1794, must rank as exceeding all within the range of authentic history, unless we except the one which destroyed Antioch in the year 526. The area disturbed was the great volcanic plain on which Quito stands.
No subterranean noise announced or accompanied the shock. Adjacent volcanoes were quiet; but the volcano of Pasto, sixty miles to the northward, had for three months been violently smoking; and at the moment the shock sixty miles away began, it suddenly stopped, nor did it again begin. The volcano of Cayambe, near Quito, seemed surrounded by meteorites. The pious people, alarmed at this manifestation of the divine wrath, formed a religious procession which walked through the principal streets. The result justified their belief in the potency of their prayers; for Quito remained unharmed. A great roar, since known as el gran ruido, was heard under the town some twenty minutes after the disaster; but at the scene of the latter it was not heard at all.
In the immediate vicinity of Riobamba, the destruction was fearful. The entire plain seemed rent into small independent fragments, which rose or sank at will. Humboldt tells that an eye-witness might have seen “fissures which alternately opened and closed, so that persons partially engulfed were saved by extending their arms, that they might not be swallowed up; portions of long trains of muleteers and laden mules disappearing in suddenly opening cross fissures, whilst other portions, by a hasty retreat, escaped the danger; vertical oscillations, by the non-simultaneous rising and sinking of adjoining portions of ground, so that persons standing in the choir of a church, sixteen feet above the pavement of the street, found themselves lowered to the level of the pavement without being thrown down; the sinking down of massive houses, with such an absence of disruption or dislocation that the inhabitants could open the doors of the interior, pass uninjured from room to room, light candles and debate with each other their chance of escape, during two days which elapsed before they were dug out; lastly, the entire disappearance of great masses of stones and building materials. The old town had possessed churches, convents, and houses of several stories; but in the places where they stood, we found, on tracing out among the ruins the former plan of the city, only stone heaps of from eight to twelve feet in height.”
Of some of the villages in the adjacent plain not a trace was left. They sunk bodily, and the earth closed over them. Of the others, only heaps of ruins were left.
Nor was this all. The great volcano of Tunguragua, at the southern extremity of the plateau, was rent asunder by the shock, or, according to others, had an eruption from the side. Immense torrents of thick, dark, sandy mud, mingled with pebbles, poured out and flooded adjacent portions of the plain, smothered scores still entangled in the ruins of their dwellings, filling numerous ravines and valleys, one of which was one thousand feet wide and seven hundred feet deep.
The total loss of life was terrible. One authority places the destruction at two hundred thousand. Forty thousand Indians were suffocated by the torrent of mud alone. It is the most destructive earthquake in modern history.
The town of Cumana has been visited almost as frequently as the far-famed Antioch. In 1530, we are told, the sea rose four fathoms, the earth was rent, a fort laid in ruins, the town wrecked, and dark, noisome liquids ejected from fissures. In 1766, a long drought, fifteen months in duration, had turned the thoughts of the people once more upon their manifold transgressions, and they were prepared for further chastisement. This came upon them. October 21 an earthquake blotted the town out of existence in less than a minute. The earth vomited sulphurous waters. The shocks were continued during fourteen months. The good people instituted an annual fast and procession in commemoration of the event.
Again, in 1794, Cumana was nearly prostrated. December 14, 1797, there was a tremendous, upward shock, with a noise like a mine explosion. Four-fifths of the town was laid in ruins. The atmosphere seemed converted to water, so great were the torrents of rain. The Indians held a religious festival and dance, believing the destruction and regeneration of the world was at hand.
The first days of November, 1799, were noted for the peculiar redness of the sky and the oppressiveness of the atmosphere, though the weather was not especially warm. At nightfall the sea breeze failed to begin, and the dusty earth began to crack in all directions. The people were sure some evil boded. November 4, as a heavy storm came up, there was a sharp gust of wind, which the natives say always precedes an earthquake; and a few minutes later came the shock; two others followed during the evening; but though all the tokens of a great shock, according to native ideas, were present in such force that the people abandoned their homes and slept in the parks and fields, the great quake never came. The redness of the sky continued, and a few nights later occurred a brilliant shower of meteors. Despite these signs and wonders, Mother Earth refused to tremble. Humboldt concluded native prognostications were unreliable.
During the past eighty years destructive earthquakes have been more frequent in South America than in any other region of the earth. First on the list is the great disaster at Caracas.
This town lies six miles from the seaport of La Guayra, in a valley “where reigns eternal spring.” Shut in by lofty mountains, its aspect is somewhat gloomy. The cold mountain air keeps the evening veiled with clouds. But as a whole, the situation is so fine that the people would hardly exchange it for a site less liable to earthquakes.
In December, 1811, when the disturbances were so great in the valleys of the Mississippi, Ohio and Arkansas, there was a sharp shock, which did no especial damage. At this time there was a severe drought, which continued during the succeeding months; but no word of the disturbances to the North, or in St. Vincent, reaching the people, they were not especially alarmed. So the days passed till Holy Week came, and hundreds were in the great churches.
At a few minutes past four there was a sudden shock which set church-bells to ringing. Then came a second, which made the ground seem as though it were boiling. This ceased, and the people supposed the danger was past, when there came the fearful subterranean roar but too well known in tropical countries, followed by series of alternating shocks at right angles to each other, and at once the beautiful city, with its palaces and homes and works of art was a shapeless ruin, with twelve thousand corpses lying amid the wreck. Four thousand people were slain in the churches alone. The great church of Alta Gracia, one hundred and fifty feet in height, whose nave was supported by pillars fifteen feet in diameter, was turned into a heap of rubbish but five or six feet high. Nearly all had sunk in the earth. Scarce a vestige of pillar or column could be found. A regiment of infantry, mustered in San Carlos barracks, was engulfed, but few escaping. Nine-tenths of the town was annihilated.
Night came. The cloud of dust, that like a mist had risen from the wreck, had settled to the ground. The full moon shone as calmly on the scene as in the past; and by the spectral light were seen strange figures hurrying to and fro. Here passed a mother with an infant’s corpse; while there a father groped amid the wreck, and called by turns the names of wife and child. No tools were left in reach in all the town; bare-handed creatures grappled with the stony heaps, and groaned in answer to the moans beneath. The aqueducts were shattered and the springs were stopped; the Guayra River was the sole supply. Scarce vessels could be found to fetch it in. Here hurrying feet bore wounded creatures to the stream; but lint and bandages were all beneath the wreck. Two thousand injured people lay upon the turf, with little of the needed help; but all their friends could do was done. Not even food enough could be procured at first.
Then anguish-stricken souls repented of their sins, and marched in procession that the wrath of God might be changed to mercy. Some driven to the verge of madness loudly confessed their sins in the open streets. Some promised to restore ill-gotten gains; often the peculation was known only to themselves. Marriages were solemnized between many who had hitherto not considered a ceremony necessary. Children were formally recognized by parents who had before repudiated them; long standing feuds and enmities were dropped.
Caracas was not the only place injured. La Guayra, Mayquetia, Antimano, Baruta, La Vega, San Felipe, and Merida were totally destroyed. Five thousand deaths occurred at San Felipe and La Guayra alone. It was impossible to give burial. Vast funeral pyres were made and corpse after corpse consigned to the flames. The total number of deaths from the earthquake, including those who perished from want and sickness induced by the exposure, was probably forty thousand; some have estimated fifty thousand. The shocks were felt as far westward as Bogota.
It does not appear that any especial commotion was felt in Central America, though shocks in the latter regions are nearly always felt in Venezuela or Columbia. Every portion of Central America has been repeatedly shaken. The town of Guatemala has been four times destroyed, the people each time selecting a new site and adhering to the old name. The people of San Salvador, on the other hand, have obstinately clung to their site, though visited by violent earthquakes in 1575, 1593, 1625, 1656, 1798, and 1839; and minor shocks are of such constant
recurrence that the locality is nicknamed “the hammock.” But the shock of 1889 was so severe that they seriously meditated leaving; but they finally settled in the old place, when four-fifths of their town had just been destroyed.
But in Holy Week, in 1854, as Mr. Squier tells us, unusual rumblings were heard on the morning of Holy Thursday. The inhabitants, somewhat alarmed, still went about their customary avocations. The remainder of the week passed without further cause for fear. At half past nine o’clock on Sunday night a severe shock so alarmed many people that they prepared to camp out for the night. At ten minutes to eleven there came without any warning a fearful quaking, which levelled the city to the earth in ten seconds; clouds of dust filled the streets; wells and fountains were choked; not a drop of water could be obtained. Not a house was left inhabitable; scarce one preserved the semblance of being erect; yet the town was composed chiefly of low, one-story structures. The air was filled with fumes of sulphur; the neighboring volcano threatened an eruption; and in addition to the usual horrors of an earthquake, other features were added.
The ex-president of the republic was so badly hurt as to be almost incapacitated for duty. Indians roamed pillaging the wreck, dropping on their knees and praying as fresh shocks terrified them; then returning to the plunder; for they were good Christians. Justice, police, clergy—all were gone. The venerable bishop, Soldana, when dragged from the ruin, bade the people flee in all haste, for “God had given the city over to the Evil One as a punishment for its sins; and in spite of the name it bore ‘(Holy Savior)’ it would be cast into the bottomless pit.” The good bishop promptly headed the retreat of the clergy from the forces of Satan, evidently under the impression that if the people could only leave the accursed locality, the devil would not be so scrupulously exact in tormenting them before the time. The people flocked after the clergy in large numbers, believing they would be safest in the neighborhood of the holy men. It is well known that even the devil respects the cloth.
The republic had been rent by civil war for years; and in this critical juncture, it seemed that it was about to be renewed. But a man of strong will and energy and coolness stepped forward—Duenas, ex-monk, lawyer, deputy, and president—from his farm, like Cincinnatus. Collecting a few friends and digging some arms from the wreck of the barracks, he inspirited the new president, and martial law was proclaimed. The shooting of a few Indian robbers imparted to the remainder a respect for law equalled only by their practical Christianity, and the work of rescue began. Large numbers of the populace permanently forsook the site.
Two years later there was a great earthquake in Honduras; but the area of disturbance was not so densely peopled, and the damage done was proportionately less. Disasters of this sort cause most Central Americans to emigrate. “Then women and children form themselves into groups and travel through the country. They set the drama in which they have taken part to music, and they go through the country singing the rude verses which they have run together in the different villages, and then send the hat around. After they have visited the whole of their own country, they cross the frontier into the neighboring State, where they are also assured of doing pretty well.”
During three centuries of Spanish occupation of South America, while scores of convulsions had visited the Pacific seaboard, none had shaken the eastern slope of the Cordilleras, or the great plains beyond; and there had resulted a settled belief that the entire region was, so to speak, earthquake-proof. But the illusion was rudely dispelled.
In the extreme west of the Argentine Republic, on the high road from Valparaiso to Buenos Ayres, lies the town of Mendoza, in full view of Tupungato and the mighty Aconcagua. Never having, in all their history, experienced any harm from these mountains, the people anticipated none.
“Mendoza had about 20,000 inhabitants and five hundred houses, nearly all of them very handsome. It also contained two very large hospitals, several schools, a splendid cathedral, and several churches. Its trade was prosperous, and more than a hundred large shops testified to the extent of its commerce. There was no such library in the whole of the Argentine Republic. Its theatre was most sumptuous, and the Alameda, its public promenade was regarded as the finest in South America.
“One evening, an immense red and blue meteor slowly traversed the sky from East to West, and the volcano of Aconcagua broke into an eruption upon the night following—20th March, 1861—without any premonitory sound or sign: the earth quaked violently, and in less than a minute the town of Mendoza had disappeared. It was transformed into a vast field of ruins, the highest of which were not more than three feet from the ground. Never within the memory of man has a town been so taken by surprise; for in this case the earthquake was not preceded by the underground mutterings which, even if only a few seconds in advance of the shock, give some sort of warning. Upon that night, and in less than four seconds, fifteen thousand people were buried in the ruins. Horrible noises, cries of terror, the heartrending howls of men and animals filled the air, and a thick cloud of dust darkened the sky.”
Mendoza was not the only place injured. At San Juan, one hundred miles northward, three thousand people were killed. Three hundred and fifty miles further away, Cordova lost a number of houses, and a slight shock was felt at Buenos Ayres. The wreck presented the scenes common in such cases; and, as in several similar disasters, bands of brigands pounced upon the town to pillage the ruins.
Of the many touching incidents, we must give place to two:
That the town was absolutely unwarned is hardly correct. A French geologist, M. Bravard, sent on a scientific mission by the Russian government, had found the volcanoes near by violently roaring, yet emitting no smoke or fire; and, nearing the valley of Mendoza, he found the soil in a constant tremor. Alarmed at these manifestations, he expressed his belief that if the pressure were not speedily relieved by eruption, a severe earthquake might follow. His assertion caused serious apprehension, for his high attainments gave his opinions great weight with the people. For nearly a week the possibility of a catastrophe was seriously discussed. One evening he stood at the door of M. Matussiere, wishing his friends good-night. Again he alluded to the earthquake—the shock came, and he was caught by the fall of the house.
Matussiere himself was on his way home from Valparaiso. When fifteen miles from Mendoza, in the mountains, a tremendous roaring was heard, but he felt no shock. The moon shone as calmly and clearly as ever, and no disturbance followed. Oppressed, however, by terrible fear, he hastened to Mendoza. He could not even guess where was the wreck of his own home. After a
long, despairing search, he saw his great house dog come bounding toward him. The dog led him to the wreck; and, after wearisome toil, the merchant found his wife and one child alive. The rest of the family, and the French geologist, were dead.
Another episode is related by M. Charton: There was at Mendoza a rich, French hotel keeper, M. Tesser. After the shock, “one of his intimate friends wandered among the ruins. His eyes were dry: he could shed tears no longer. He stopped on the site of the hotel, trying in vain to recall the old arrangements. He was retiring—his heart filled with sighs, thinking of the honest man and the family he had loved so well—when he perceived, through the shapeless mass of girders and calcined stones, M. Tesser’s dog, which moaned; he approached it. The poor animal, the two hind legs and part of the body of which were crushed, forced itself, in spite of his sufferings and weakness, to scratch with his front paws, and uttered, from time to time, a plaintive howl. As it saw its master’s friend come near, it exerted itself and howled louder. The friend understood that Tesser must be beneath this rubbish, and hoped he was not dead. He ran to fetch some persons, and, with their help, after much labor, he indeed discovered the body of poor Tesser; his left arm and leg, lying under the beams, were broken, his mouth and eyes full of earth, but he still breathed. Before trying to disengage his limbs, they washed his face, which seemed to relieve him; without saying a word, he instinctively stretched his right arm toward his dog, who drew himself to him, and died a few moments afterwards.
“Tesser scarcely was in a state to pronounce any words, before he asked where his family was. All had perished in the great disaster. Hearing this answer, he closed his eyes with despair; then, making a fresh effort, he pronounced the name of his little girl, and showed with his finger a separate place where he had put her to bed. Some of the people, in compassion for his grief, although without hope, made further search; others occupied themselves in dressing his broken limbs. A few minutes later, those rendering him this service saw him suddenly raise himself up—he gave a cry—they brought him his daughter, still living. A beam had fallen across the bed of the child and had protected it; but she was seriously wounded in the head; she had also her mouth and eyes filled with dirt, and was exhausted with hunger.” For two months the pair lay under a tent against a tree, more dead than alive. They only remained to each other of the once rich and happy family. But in this respect, they were no worse off than hundreds of others.
The people abandoned the site, unable to remain in view of so many monuments of former happiness. Strangers came in and a new Mendoza rose, but not so lovely as the former one. This town was also severely shaken in 1885.
With a notice of one other earthquake, which demands attention because of unusual results, this chapter must close.
This shock occurred August 13, 1868, in Peru. The center of the convulsion was at Arequipa, at the foot of the lofty volcanic mountain of Misti, which has not shown signs of activity since the great outburst of 1542. So far as their volcanic neighbor was concerned, the forty-four thousand people of Arequipa had apparently no reason for apprehension.
At five minutes past five, there came a light shock like the jar of a distant explosion. Half a minute later began the subterranean rumbling, with a rapidly increasing vibration, which made the people run for their lives into the streets. Then “the swaying motion changed into fierce, vertical upheaval. The subterranean roaring increased in a terrifying manner; then were heard the heart-piercing shrieks of the wretched people, the bursting of walls, the crashing fall of houses and churches, while over all rolled thick clouds of a yellowish-black dust, which, had they been poured forth many minutes longer, would have suffocated thousands.”
Tacna and Arica suffered little less. But the greatest damage in the coast region was from the sea wave. A few minutes after the shock, the sea rolled back, falling twenty-five feet; then a huge, black wall of water leaped up, fifty feet in height, and rushed for the shore. The American vice-consul at Arica, well versed in the phenomena of earthquakes, left his house at the first shock, and ran with his family to the hills to avoid any probable sea wave. The monster billow struck the mole to pieces, and swept clean the lower part of the town. Six vessels were lost in the bay, or tossed over rocks and houses; two, a Peruvian corvette and a United States war-ship, were carried inland and left high and dry, half a mile north of Arica, without a broken spar or tarnished flag. Similar feats were recorded at Iquique. Twelve hundred miles of sea-coast were more or less affected. Sixty million dollars worth of property were destroyed, and twenty thousand people killed.
The great sea wave was especially remarkable. Recoiling from the Peruvian coast, in three hours its southern expansion was observed at Coquimbo, eight hundred miles south. An hour later it was at Constitucion, four hundred and fifty miles further. Northward, the wave rushed, sixty feet high, into the harbor of San Pedro, California, five thousand miles from the shock.
To the westward, the Sandwich Islands were reached that night, and irregular waves broke upon the coast for three days. Before midnight it broke upon the Marquesas and the Paumotu archipelago. At half-past three in the morning it was at New Zealand. By daylight it was surging along the coasts of Australia, and by mid-day it was tossing even on the southwest coast of Australia. The same day, it was heaving on the shores of Japan.