SOUTH AMERICAN CITIES DESTROYED.
BY TRUMBULL WHITE.
=Earthquakes Ravage the Coast Cities of Peru and the
Neighboring Countries--Spanish Capitals in the New
World Frequent Sufferers--Lima, Callao and Caracas
Devastated--Tidal Waves Accompany the Earthquakes--Juan
Fernandez Island Shaken--Fissures Engulf Men and
Animals--Peculiar Effects Observed.=
The discovery of America, in 1492, brought a great accession to the
number of recorded earthquakes, as South and Central America and the
islands near them have furnished almost innumerable instances of the
phenomena.
The first of the known earthquakes in the western hemisphere occurred
in 1530, and the Gulf of Paria, with the adjacent coast of Cumana, in
Venezuela, was the scene of the catastrophe. It was accompanied by a
great sea-wave, the tide suddenly rising twenty-four feet, and then
retiring. There were also opened in the earth several large fissures,
which discharged black, fetid salt water and petroleum. A mountain
near the neighboring Gulf of Caracas was split in twain, and has since
remained in its cloven condition.
The coast of Peru was visited by an earthquake in the year 1586, and
again in 1687. On the first occasion the shock was accompanied by a
great sea-wave eighty-four feet high, which inundated the country for
two leagues inland. There was still another dreadful convulsion on
this coast in 1746, when the sea twice retreated and dashed in again
with a tremendous wave about eighty feet high, overwhelming Lima and
four other seaports. A portion of the coast sank down, producing a
new bay at Callao; and in several mountains in the neighborhood there
were formed large fissures whence water and mud gushed forth. On May
24, 1751, the city of Concepcion, in Chili, was entirely swallowed up
during an earthquake, and the sea rolled over its site. The ancient
port was destroyed, and a new town was afterwards erected ten miles
inland. The great sea-wave, which accompanied this earthquake, rolled
in upon the shores of the island of Juan Fernandez, and overwhelmed a
colony which had been recently established there. The coast near the
ancient port of Concepcion was considerably raised on this occasion,
and the high water mark now stands twenty-four feet below its former
level.
The coast of Caracas and the adjacent island of Trinidad were
violently convulsed in 1776, and the whole city of Cumana was reduced
to ruins. The shocks were continued for upwards of a year, and were at
first repeated almost hourly. There were frequent eruptions of
sulphurous water from fissures in the ground, and an island in the
Orinoco disappeared.
Rihamba must have stood, it would appear, almost immediately over the
focus of the dreadful earthquake of February 4, 1797. This unfortunate
city was situated in the district of Quito, not far from the base of
the great volcano of Tunguragua. That mountain was probably the center
of disturbance, and the shock was experienced with disastrous effects
over a district of country extending about 120 miles from north to
south and about sixty miles from east to west. Every town and village
comprehended within this district was reduced to ruins. The shocks,
however, were felt, though in a milder form, over a much larger area,
extending upwards of 500 miles from north to south and more than 400
miles from east to west.
At Riobamba the shocks, which began at about eight o'clock in the
morning, are said to have been vertical. Some faint idea may be formed
of the extreme violence of this motion from the fact mentioned by
Humboldt that the dead bodies of some of the inhabitants who perished
were tossed over a small river to the height of several hundred feet,
and landed on an adjacent hill.
Vertical movements, so powerful and so long continued, could not fail
to produce an enormous displacement of the ground, and to be very
destructive to all buildings which it sustained. The soil was rent,
and, as it were, torn asunder and twisted in an extraordinary manner.
Several of the fissures opened and closed again; many persons were
engulfed in them; but a few saved themselves by simply stretching out
their arms, so that, when the fissure closed, the upper parts of their
bodies were left above the ground, thus admitting of their being
easily extricated. In some instances whole cavalcades of horsemen and
troops of laden mules disappeared in those chasms; while some few
escaped by throwing themselves back from the edge of the cleft.
The amount of simultaneous elevation and depression of the ground was
in some cases as much as twelve feet; and several persons who were in
the choir of one of the churches escaped by simply stepping on the
pavement of the street, which was brought up to a level with the spot
where they stood. Instances occurred of whole houses sinking bodily
into the earth, till their roofs were fairly underground; but so
little were the buildings thus engulfed injured, that their
inhabitants were able still to live in them, and by the light of
flambeaux to pass from room to room, the doors opening and shutting as
easily as before. The people remained in them, subsisting on the
provisions they had in store, for the space of two days, until they
were extricated safe and sound. With the majority of the inhabitants,
however, it fared otherwise. The loss of life in the city, and
throughout the district most convulsed, was enormous, 40,000 persons
altogether having perished.
Of Riobamba itself the ruin was complete. When Humboldt took a plan of
the place after the catastrophe, he could find nothing but heaps of
stones eight or ten feet high; although the city had contained
churches and convents, with many private houses several stories in
height. The town of Quero was likewise entirely overthrown.
At Tacunga the ruin was nearly as thorough, not a building having been
left standing save an arch in the great square, and part of a
neighboring house. The churches of St. Augustin, St. Domingo, and La
Merced were at the moment thronged with people hearing mass. Not one
escaped alive. All were buried, along with the objects of their
worship, under the ruins of their consecrated buildings. In several
parts of the town and its neighborhood there were opened larger
fissures in the ground, whence quantities of water poured forth. The
village of St. Philip, near Tacunga, containing a school in which
upwards of forty children were assembled at the time, disappeared
bodily in a chasm. A great many other villages with their inhabitants
were destroyed, by being either overthrown or engulfed.
Even at Quito, although so distant from the centre of the disturbance,
a great deal of damage was done to the churches and other public
buildings by the shock, several being wholly ruined. The private
houses and other buildings of moderate height, however, were spared.
The superstitious inhabitants of this fair city, having been greatly
alarmed by an unwonted display of luminous meteors, had devoted the
previous day to carrying in procession through their streets the
graven images and relics of their saints, in the vain hope of
appeasing divine wrath. They were doomed to learn by experience that
these idols were powerless to protect even the consecrated edifices
dedicated to their honor, and in which they were enshrined.
The Bay of Caracas was the scene of a dreadful earthquake in 1812. The
city of Caracas was totally destroyed, and ten thousand of its
inhabitants were buried beneath its ruins.
The shock was most severe in the northern part of the town, nearest
to the mountain of La Silla, which rises like a vast dome, with steep
cliffs in the direction of the sea. The churches of the Trinity and
Alta Gracia, the latter of which was more than one hundred and fifty
feet high, and the nave of which was supported by pillars twelve or
fifteen feet thick, were reduced to a mass of ruins not more than five
or six feet high. The subsidence of the ruins was such that scarcely a
vestige of pillar or column could be found. The barracks of San Carlos
disappeared altogether, and a regiment of infantry, under arms to take
part in a procession, was swallowed up with the exception of a few
men.
Nine-tenths of the town was annihilated. The houses which had not
collapsed were cracked to such an extent that their occupants did not
dare to re-enter them. To the estimate of 10,000 victims caused by the
earthquake, must be added the many who succumbed, weeks and months
afterward, for want of food and relief. The night of Holy Thursday to
Good Friday presented the most lamentable spectacle of desolation and
woe which can well be conceived. The thick layer of dust, which,
ascending from the ruins, obscured the air like mist, had again
settled on the ground; the earthquake shocks had ceased, and the night
was calm and clear. A nearly full moon lighted up the scene, and the
aspect of the sky was in striking contrast with that of a land strewn
with corpses and ruins.
Mothers might be seen running about with their children whom they were
vainly trying to recall to life. Distracted families were searching
for a brother, a husband, or some other relative, whose fate was
unknown to them, but who, they hoped, might be discovered in the
crowd. The injured lying half buried beneath the ruins were making
piteous appeals for help, and over 2,000 were extricated. Never did
human kindness reveal itself in a more touching and ingenious fashion
than in the efforts made to relieve the sufferers whose cries were so
heart-breaking to hear. There were no tools to clear away the
rubbish, and the work of relief had to be performed with the bare
hands.
The injured and the sick who had escaped from the hospitals were
carried to the banks of the river Guayra, where their only shelter was
the foliage of the trees. The beds, the lint for binding up wounds,
the surgical instruments, the medicines and all the objects of
immediate necessity were buried beneath the ruins, and for the first
few days there was a scarcity of everything, even of food. Water was
also very scarce inside the town, as the shock had broken up the
conduits of the fountains and the upheaval had blocked the springs
that fed them. In order to get water it was necessary to descend to
the river Guayra, which had risen to a great height, and there were
very few vessels left to get it in.
It was necessary, also, to dispose of the dead with all dispatch, and
in the impossibility of giving decent burial to so many thousand
corpses, detachments of men were told off to burn them. Funeral pyres
were erected between the heaps of ruins, and the ceremony lasted
several days.
The fierce shocks which had in less than a minute occasioned such
great disasters could not be expected to have confined their
destructive effects to one narrow zone of the continent, and these
extended to a great part of Venezuela, all along the coast and
specially among the mountains inland. The towns of La Guayra,
Mayquetia, Antimano, Baruta, La Vega, San Felipe, and Merida were
entirely destroyed, the number of deaths exceeding 5,000 at La Guayra
and San Felipe.
In November, 1822, the coast of Chile began to be violently convulsed
by a succession of shocks, the first of which was of great severity.
The heavings of the earth were quite perceptible to the eye. The sea
rose and fell to a great extent in the harbor of Valparaiso, and the
ships appeared as if they were first rapidly forced through the water,
and then struck on the ground. The town of Valparaiso and several
others were completely overthrown. Sounds like those produced by the
escape of steam accompanied this earthquake, and it was felt
throughout a distance of 1,200 miles along the coast, a portion of
which--extending to about 100 miles--was permanently raised to a
height varying from two to four feet. At Quintero the elevation was
four feet, and at Valparaiso three feet; but about a mile inland from
the latter place the elevation was as much as six or seven feet; while
the whole surface raised is estimated at nearly 100,000 square miles.
The year 1868 proved very disastrous in South America. On the 13th of
August of that year a series of shocks commenced which were felt over
a large extent of country, stretching from Ibarra on the northwestern
border of Ecuador to Cabija on the coast of Bolivia, a distance of
about 1,400 miles. The effects were most severe about the southern
portion of the Peruvian coast, where the towns of Iquique, Arica,
Tacna, Port Ilay, Arequipa, Pisco, and several others were destroyed,
and in the northern parts of Ecuador, where the town of Ibarra was
overthrown, burying nearly the whole of the inhabitants under its
ruins. A small town in the same quarter, named Cotocachi, was
engulfed, and its site is now occupied by a lake. The total loss of
lives is estimated at upward of 20,000.
On May 15, 1875, earthquake shocks of a serious character were
experienced over large areas of Chile. At Valparaiso the shock lasted
for forty-two seconds, with a vertical motion, so that the ground
danced under foot. Two churches and many buildings were damaged.
Another earthquake occurred at Valparaiso, July 8, when there were six
shocks in succession. The inhabitants took refuge in the streets,
several people were killed, and much damage was done to property.
About the middle of May, 1875, a most disastrous earthquake visited
New Granada, the region of its influence extending over an area 500
miles in width. It was first felt perceptibly at Bogota; thence it
traveled north, gaining intensity as it went, until it reached the
southeast boundary line of Magdalena, where its work of destruction
began. It traveled along the line of the Andes, destroying, in whole
or in part, the cities of Cucuta, San Antonio, and Santiago, and
causing the death of about 16,000 persons. On the evening of May 17, a
strange rumbling sound was heard beneath the ground, but no shock was
felt. This premonitory symptom was followed on the morning of the 18th
by a terrific shock. "It suddenly shook down the walls of houses,
tumbled down churches, and the principal buildings, burying the
citizens in the ruins." Another shock completed the work of
destruction, and shocks at intervals occurred for two days. "To add to
the horrors of the calamity, the Lobotera volcano, in front of
Santiago, suddenly began to shoot out lava in immense quantities in
the form of incandescent balls of fire, which poured into the city and
set fire to many buildings."
On the evening of April 12, 1878, a severe earthquake occurred in
Venezuela which destroyed a considerable portion of the town of Cua.
Immediately preceding the shock the sky was clear and the moon in
perfect brightness. It lasted only two seconds, but in that time the
center of the town, which was built on a slight elevation, was laid in
ruins. The soil burst at several places, giving issue to water
strongly impregnated with poisonous substances.
The Isthmus of Panama was the scene of a succession of earthquakes in
September, 1882, which, although the loss of life was small, were
exceedingly destructive to property. On the morning of September 7,
the inhabitants of Panama were roused from their beds by the
occurrence of one of the longest and most severe shocks ever
experienced in that earthquake-vexed region. Preceded by a hollow
rumbling noise, the first shock lasted nearly thirty seconds, during
which it did great damage to buildings. It was severely felt on board
ship, passengers declaring that the vessel seemed as if it were lifted
bodily from the sea and then allowed to fall back.
Its effects on the Panama railway were very marked. The stone
abutments of several of the bridges were cracked, and the earthworks
sank in half a dozen places. In other places the rails were curved as
if they had been intentionally bent. Other shocks less severe followed
the first, until at 11:30, another sharp shock alarmed the whole city,
and drove the inhabitants at once from their houses into the squares.
This earthquake was also severely felt at Colon, where it lasted for
fully a minute, moving many buildings from their foundations, and
creating intense alarm. A deep fissure, 400 yards in length, was
opened in the earth.
To what extent this tendency to earthquake shocks threatens the
proposed Panama Canal, it is difficult to say. Beyond question a great
earthquake would do immense damage to such a channel and its lock
gates, but the advocates of the Panama route argue with apparent truth
that even so it has a great advantage over the Nicaragua route. In the
latter, volcanoes are numerous, and eruptions not infrequent. Lake
Nicaragua itself, through which the canal route passes, has in it
several islands which are but volcanic peaks raised above the water,
and the whole region is subject to disturbances from the interior of
the earth.