HUMBOLDT’S TRAVELS.

The following interesting description of the last dreadful catastrophe which befel the city of Caraccas, is taken from Humboldt’s Travels, just published:—

“A great drought prevailed at this period in the province of Venezuela.

Not a single drop of rain had fallen at Caraccas, or in the country ninety leagues round, during the five months which preceded the destruction of the capital.

The 26th of March was a remarkably hot day.

The air was calm and the sky unclouded.

It was Holy Thursday, and a great part of the population was assembled in the churches.

Nothing seemed to presage the calamities of the day.

At seven minutes after four in the afternoon the first shock was felt; it was sufficiently powerful to make the bells of the churches toll; it lasted five or six seconds, during which time, the ground was in a continual undulating movement, and seemed to heave up like a boiling liquid.

The danger was thought to be past, when a tremendous subterraneous noise was heard, resembling the rolling of thunder, but louder, and of longer continuance, than that heard within the tropics in time of storms.

This noise preceded a perpendicular motion of three or four seconds, followed by an undulatory movement somewhat longer.

The shocks were in opposite directions, from north to south and from east to west.

Nothing could resist the movement from beneath upward, and undulations crossing each other.

The town of Caraccas was entirely overthrown.

Thousands of the inhabitants (between nine and ten thousand) were buried under the ruins of the houses and churches.

The procession had not yet set out; but the crowd was so great in the churches, that nearly three or four thousand persons were crushed by the fall of their vaulted roofs.

The explosion was stronger toward the north, in that part of the town situate nearest the mountain of Avila, and the Silla.

The churches of La Trinidad and Alta Gracia, which were more than 150 feet high, and the naves of which were supported by pillars of twelve or fifteen feet diameter, left a mass of ruins scarcely exceeding five or six feet in elevation.

The sinking of the ruins has been so considerable, that there now scarcely remain any vestiges of pillars or columns.

The barracks called El Quartel del San Carlos, situate farther north of the church of the Trinity, on the road from the Custom-house de la Pastora, almost entirely disappeared.

A regiment of troops of the line, that was assembled under arms, ready to join the procession, was, with the exception of a few men, buried under the ruins of this great edifice.

Nine-tenths of the fine town of Caraccas were entirely destroyed.

The walls of the houses that were not thrown down, as those of the street San Juan, near the Capuchin Hospital, were cracked in such a manner, that it was impossible to run the risk of inhabiting them.

The effects of the earthquake were somewhat less violent in the western and southern parts of the city, between the principal square and the ravin of Caraguata.

There the cathedral, supported by enormous buttresses, remains standing.

“Estimating at nine or ten thousand the number of the dead in the city of Caraccas, we do not include those unhappy persons, who, dangerously wounded, perished several months after, for want of food and proper care.

The night of Holy Thursday presented the most distressing scene of desolation and sorrow.

That thick cloud of dust, which, rising above the ruins, darkened the sky like a fog, had settled on the ground.

No shock was felt, and never was a night more calm, or more serene.

The moon, nearly full, illumined the rounded domes of the Silla, and the aspect of the sky formed a perfect contrast to that of the earth, covered with the dead, and heaped with ruins.

Mothers were seen bearing in their arms their children, whom they hoped to recal to life.

Desolate families wandered through the city seeking a brother, a husband, a friend, of whose fate they were ignorant, and whom they believed to be lost in the crowd.

The people pressed along the streets, which could no more be recognised but by long lines of ruins.

“All the calamities experienced in the great catastrophes of Lisbon, Messina, Lima, and Riobamba were renewed on the fatal day of the 26th of March, 1812; the wounded, buried under the ruins, implored by their cries the help of the passers by, and nearly two thousand were dug out.

Never was pity displayed in a more affecting manner; never had it been seen more ingeniously active, than in the efforts employed to save the miserable victims, whose groans reached the ear.

Implements for digging, and clearing away the ruins were entirely wanting; and the people were obliged to use their bare hands, to disinter the living.

The wounded, as well as the sick who had escaped from the hospitals, were laid on the banks of the small river Guayra.

They found no shelter but the foliage of trees.

Beds, linen to dress the wounds, instruments of surgery, medicines, and objects of the most urgent necessity, were buried under the ruins.

Every thing, even food, was wanting during the first days.

Water became alike scarce in the interior of the city.

The commotion had rent the pipes of the fountains; the falling in of the earth had choked up the springs that supplied them; and it became necessary, in order to have water, to go down to the river Guayra, which was considerably swelled; and then vessels to convey the water were wanting.

“There remained a duty to be fulfilled toward the dead, enjoined at once by piety, and the dread of infection.

It being impossible to inter so many thousand corpses, half-buried under the ruins, commissaries were appointed to burn the bodies: and for this purpose funeral piles were erected between the heaps of ruins.

This ceremony lasted several days.

Amid so many public calamities, the people devoted themselves to those religious duties, which they thought were the most fitted to appease the wrath of Heaven.

Some, assembling in processions, sang funeral hymns; others, in a state of distraction, confessed themselves aloud in the streets.

In this town was now repeated what had been remarked in the province of Quito, after the tremendous earthquake of 1797; a number of marriages were contracted between persons, who had neglected for many years to sanction their union by the sacerdotal benediction; children found parents, by whom they had never till then been acknowledged; restitutions were promised by persons, who had never been accused of fraud; and families, who had long been enemies, were drawn together by the tie of common calamity.”—pp.

12—17.

Humboldt also gives the following curious account of the manner in which the Indians catch the Gymnoti, or electrical eels, by driving horses into the pools, and driving them out of the mud in which they lodge themselves:—

“The extraordinary noise caused by the horses’ hoofs makes the fish issue from the mud, and excites them to combat.

These yellowish and livid eels, resembling large aquatic serpents, swim on the surface of the water, and crowd under the bellies of the horses and mules.

A contest between animals of so different an organization furnishes a very striking spectacle.

The Indians, provided with harpoons and long slender reeds, surround the pool closely; and some climb upon the trees, the branches of which extend horizontally over the surface of the water.

By their wild cries, and the length of their reeds, they prevent the horses from running away and reaching the bank of the pool.

The eels, stunned by the noise, defend themselves by the repeated discharge of their electric batteries.

During a long time they seem to prove victorious.

Several horses sink beneath the violence of the invisible strokes, which they receive from all sides in organs the most essential to life; and stunned by the force and frequency of the shocks disappear under the water.

Others, panting, with mane erect and haggard eyes, expressing anguish, raise themselves, and endeavour to flee from the storm by which they are overtaken.

They are driven back by the Indians into the middle of the water; but a small number succeed in eluding the active vigilance of the fishermen.

These regain the shore, stumbling at every step, and stretch themselves on the sand, exhausted with fatigue, and their limbs benumbed by the electric shocks of the gymnoti.

“In less than five minutes two horses were drowned.

The eel, being five feet long, and pressing itself against the belly of the horses, makes a discharge along the whole extent of its electric organ. It attacks at once the heart, the intestines, and the plexus cœliacus of the abdominal nerves.

It is natural that the effect felt by the horses should be more powerful than that produced upon man by the touch of the same fish at only one of his extremities.

The horses are probably not killed but only stunned.

They are drowned from the impossibility of rising amid the prolonged struggle between the other horses and the eels.

“We had little doubt that the fishing would terminate by killing successively all the animals engaged; but by degrees the impetuosity of this unequal combat diminished, and the wearied gymnoti dispersed.

They require a long rest, and abundant nourishment, to repair what they have lost of galvanic force.

The mules and horses appear less frightened; their manes are no longer bristled, and their eyes express less dread.

The gymnoti approach timidly the edge of the marsh, where they are taken by means of small harpoons fastened to long cords.

When the cords are very dry the Indians feel no shock in raising the fish into the air.

In a few minutes we had five large eels, the greater part of which were but slightly wounded.

Some were taken by the same means toward the evening.”—pp.

348—350.

M. de Humboldt says it would be temerity to expose oneself to the first shocks of a large and strongly irritated gymnotus; that a stroke from such a fish is productive of more pain and numbness than from the discharge of a large Leyden jar; and that he received so dreadful a shock by imprudently placing his feet on one just taken out of the water, that he was affected the rest of the day with a violent pain in the knees, and in almost every joint.

He adds, that the electric action of the fish depends entirely on its will, and that it has the power of directing the action of its organs to any particular part of the external object that may affect it, or towards the point where it finds itself the most strongly irritated.

We have now a dissertation of about twenty pages on the nature and quality of the electrical action of fishes, of which we can only find room for the following curious paragraph:—

“The presence of the gymnoti is considered as the principal cause of the want of fish in the ponds and pools of the Llanos.

The gymnoti kill many more than they devour; and the Indians told us, that when they take young alligators and gymnoti at the same time in very strong nets, the latter never display the slightest trace of a wound, because they disable the young alligators before they are attacked by them.

All the inhabitants of the waters dread the society of the gymnoti.

Lizards, tortoises, and frogs seek the pools, where they are secure from their action.

It became necessary to change the direction of a road near Uritucu, because these electrical eels were so numerous in one river, that they every year killed a great number of mules of burden as they forded the water.”—p. 374.

In the following anecdote he describes the manner in which the natives resist the attacks of the crocodile:—

“They related to us the history of a young girl of Uritucu, who by singular intrepidity and presence of mind saved herself from the jaws of a crocodile.

When she felt herself seized, she sought the eyes of the animal, and plunged her fingers into them with such violence, that the pain forced the crocodile to let her loose, after having bitten off the lower part of her left arm.

The girl, notwithstanding the enormous quantity of blood she lost, happily reached the shore, swimming with the hand she had still left.

In those desert countries, where man is ever wrestling with nature, discourse daily turns on the means that may be employed to escape from a tiger, a boa or traga venado, or a crocodile; every one prepares himself in some sort for the dangers that await him.

“I knew,” said the young girl of Uritucu coolly, that the cayman lets go his hold, if you push your fingers into his eyes.”

Long after my return to Europe, I learned, that in the interior of Africa the negroes know and practice the same means.

Who does not recollect with a lively interest Isaaco, the guide of the unfortunate Mungo Park, seized twice, near Boulinkombou, by a crocodile, and twice escaping from the jaws of the monster, having succeeded in placing his fingers under water in both his eyes?

The African Isaaco, and the young American, owed their safety to the same presence of mind, and the same combination of ideas.”—pp. 423, 424.