Digitale Ausgabe

THERE are few events in the physical world which are cal-culated to excite so deep and permanent an interest as the earth-quake which destroyed the town of Caraccas, and by whichmore than 20,000 persons perished, almost at the same instant,in the province of Venezuela. The general results of thisfrightful catastrophe have been long known in this country; butits particular details, so afflicting to human feelings, and thephysical phenomena by which it was accompanied, so importantin geological speculations, have been only recently described byM. Humboldt †. This distinguished traveller, who had visitedthe city of Caraccas previous to its destruction, has been atgreat pains to collect and compare the descriptions of individualswho had witnessed the effects of the earthquake, and has thusbeen enabled to draw a faithful picture of this terrible convul-sion, marked with that glowing eloquence which characterisesall his writings. We regret that our limits will not permit usto present our readers with all his reasonings respecting theinfluence of a system of volcanoes over a vast extent of cir-

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† Personal Narrative, vol. iv. p. 12.|273|cumjacent country; but we may afterwards have another op-portunity of resuming this branch of the subject. “The 26th of March was a remarkably hot day. The airwas calm, and the sky unclouded. It was Holy Thursday, anda great part of the population was assembled in the churches.Nothing seemed to presage the calamities of the day. At sevenminutes after four in the afternoon the first shock was felt; itwas sufficiently powerful, to make the bells of the churches toll;it lasted five or six seconds, during which time, the ground wasin a continual undulating movement, and seemed to heave uplike a boiling liquid. The danger was thought to be past, whena tremendous subterraneous noise was heard, resembling therolling of thunder, but louder, and of longer continuance, thanthat heard within the tropics in time of storms. This noise pre-ceded a perpendicular motion of three or four seconds, followedby an undulatory movement somewhat longer. The shockswere in opposite directions, from north to south, and from eastto west. Nothing could resist the movement from beneath up-ward, and undulations crossing each other. The town of Ca-raccas was entirely overthrown. Between nine and ten thou-sand of the inhabitants were buried under the ruins of thehouses and churches. The procession had not yet set out;but the crowd was so great in the churches, that nearly threeor four thousand persons were crushed by the fall of theirvaulted roofs. The explosion was stronger towards the north,in that part of the town situated nearest the mountain of Avila,and the Silla. The churches of la Trinidad and Alta Gracia,which where more than 150 feet high, and the naves of whichwere supported by pillars of twelve or fifteen feet diameter, lefta mass of ruins scarcely exceeding five or six feet in elevation.The sinking of the ruins has been so considerable, that therenow scarcely remain any vestiges of pillars or columns. Thebarracks, called El Quartel de San Carlos, situate farthernorth of the Church of the Trinity, on the road from the Cus-tom-house de la Pastora, almost entirely disappeared. A regi-ment of troops of the line, that was assembled under arms,ready to join the procession, was, with the exception of a fewmen, buried under the ruins of this great edifice. Nine-tenthsof the fine town of Caraccas were entirely destroyed. The |274|walls of the houses that were not thrown down, as those of thestreet San Juan, near the Capuchin Hospital, were cracked in sucha manner, that it was impossible to run the risk of inhabiting them. “Estimating at nine or ten thousand the number of the deadin the city of Caraccas, we do not include those unhappy per-sons, who, dangerously wounded, perished several months after,for want of food and proper attention. The night of Holy Thurs-day presented the most distressing scene of desolation and sor-row. That thick cloud of dust, which, rising above the ruins,darkened the sky like a fog, had settled on the ground. Noshock was felt, and never was a night more calm or more serene.The moon, nearly full, illumined the rounded domes of theSilla, and the aspect of the sky formed a perfect contrast to thatof the earth, covered with the dead, and heaped with ruins.Mothers were seen bearing in their arms their children, whomthey hoped to recall to life. Desolate families wandered throughthe city, seeking a brother, a husband, a friend, of whose fatethey were ignorant, and whom they believed to be lost in thecrowd. The people pressed along the streets, which could nomore be recognised but by long lines of ruins. “All the calamities experienced in the great catastrophes ofLisbon, Messina, Lima, and Riobamba, were renewed on thefatal day of the 26th of March 1812. The wounded, buriedunder the ruins, implored by their cries the help of the passersby, and nearly 2000 were dug out. Implements for digging,and clearing away the ruins were entirely wanting; and thepeople were obliged to use their bare hands to disinter theliving. The wounded, as well as the sick who had escapedfrom the hospitals, were laid on the banks of the small riverGuayra. 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 theruins. Every thing, even food, was wanting during the firstdays. Water became alike scarce in the interior of the city.The commotion had rent the pipes of the fountains; the fallingin of the earth had choked up the springs that supplied them;and it became necessary, in order to have water, to go down tothe river Guayra, which was considerably swelled; and thenvessels to convey the water were wanting. |275| “There remained a duty to be fulfilled towards the dead,enjoined at once by piety and the dread of infection. It beingimpossible to inter so many thousand corpses, half-buried underthe ruins, commissaries were appointed to burn the bodies: andfor this purpose, funeral piles were erected between the heapsof ruins. This ceremony lasted several days. Amid so manypublic calamities, the people devoted themselves to those reli-gious duties, which they thought were the most fitted to appeasethe wrath of Heaven. Some, assembling in procession, sungfuneral hymns; others, in a state of distraction, confessed them-selves aloud in the streets. In this town was now repeatedwhat had been remarked in the province of Quito, after thetremendous earthquake of 1797; a number of marriages werecontracted between persons, who had neglected for many yearsto sanction their union by the sacerdotal benediction. Childrenfound parents, by whom they had never till then been acknow-ledged; restitutions were promised by persons, who had neverbeen accused of fraud; and families, who had long been ene-mies, were drawn together by the tie of common calamity. Ifthis feeling seemed to calm the passions of some, and open theheart to pity, it had a contrary effect on others, rendering themmore rigid and inhuman. “Shocks as violent as those which, in the space of oneminute *, overthrew the city of Caraccas, could not be confinedto a small portion of the continent. Their fatal effects extend-ed as far as the provinces of Venezuela, Varinas, and Maracay-bo, along the coast; and still more to the inland mountains.La Guayra, Mayquetia, Antimano, Baruta, La Vega, San Fe-lipe, and Merida, were almost entirely destroyed. The numberof the dead exceeded four or five thousand at La Guayra, andat the town of San Felipe, near the copper-mines of Aroa. Itappears, that it was on a line running east north-east, and westsouth-west, from La Guayra and Caraccas to the lofty moun-tains of Niquitao and Merida, that the violence of the earth-quake was principally directed. It was felt in the kingdom of

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* The duration of the earthquake, that is to say the whole of the movementsof undulation and rising which occasioned the horrible catastrophe of the 26th ofMarch 1812, was estimated by some at 50″, by others at 1′ 12″.|276|New Granada from the branches of the high Sierra de SantaMartha as far as Santa Fe de Bogota and Honda, on thebanks of the Magdalena, 180 leagues from Caraccas. It wasevery where more violent in the Cordilleras of gneiss and mica-slate, or immediately at their foot, than in the plains: and thisdifference was particularly striking in the savannahs of Varinasand Casanara. In the valleys of Aragua, situate betweenCaraccas and the town of San Felipe, the commotions werevery weak: and La Victoria, Maracay, and Valentia, scarcelysuffered at all, notwithstanding their proximity to the capital.At Valecillo, a few leagues from Valencia, the earth, opening,threw out such an immense quantity of water, that it formed anew torrent. The same phenomenon took place near Porto-Cabello. On the other hand, the lake of Maracaybo diminish-ed sensibly. At Coro no commotion was felt, though the townis situated upon the coast, between other towns which sufferedfrom the earthquake. “Fifteen or eighteen hours after the great catastrophe, theground remained tranquil. The night, as we have already ob-served, was fine and calm; and the commotions did not recom-mence till after the 27th. They were then attended with avery loud and long continued subterranean noise. The in-habitants of Caraccas wandered into the country; but thevillages and farms having suffered as much as the town, theycould find no shelter till they were beyond the mountains of LosTeques, in the valleys of Aragua, and in the Llanos or Sa-vannahs. No less than fifteen oscillations were often felt in oneday. On the 5th of April there was almost as violent an earth-quake, as that which overthrew the capital. During severalhours the ground was in a state of perpetual undulation. Largemasses of earth fell in the mountains; and enormous rocks weredetached from the Silla of Caraccas. It was even asserted andbelieved that the two domes of the Silla sunk fifty or sixty toises;but this assertion is founded on no measurement whatever. “While violent commotions were felt at the same time in thevalley of the Missisippi, in the island of St Vincent, and in theprovince of Venezuela, the inhabitants of Caraccas, of Calabozo,situated in the midst of the steppes, and on the borders of theRio Apura, in a space of 4000 square leagues, were terrified |277|on the 30th of April 1812, by a subterraneous noise, which re-sembled frequent discharges of the largest cannon. This noisebegan at two in the morning. It was accompanied by noshock; and, what is very remarkable, it was as loud on thecoast as at eighty leagues distance inland. It was every wherebelieved to be transmitted through the air; and was so far frombeing thought a subterraneous noise, that at Carraccas, as wellas at Calabozo, preparations were made to put the place into astate of defence against an enemy, who seemed to be advancingwith heavy artillery. Mr Palacio, crossing the Rio Apuranear the junction of the Rio Nula, was told by the inhabitantsthat the ‘firing of cannon’ had been heard as distinctly at thewestern extremity of the province of Varinas, as at the port ofLa Guayra to the north of the chain of the coast. “The day on which the inhabitants of Terra Firma werealarmed by a subterraneous noise, was that on which happenedthe eruption of the volcano in the island of St Vincent. Thismountain, near five hundred toises high, had not thrown outany lava since the year 1718. Scarcely was any smoke perceiv-ed to issue from its top, when, in the month of May 1811, fre-quent shocks announced, that the volcanic fire was either re-kindled, or directed anew toward that part of the West Indies.The first eruption did not take place till the 27th of April1812, at noon. It was only an ejection of ashes, but attendedwith a tremendous noise. On the 30th, the lava passed thebrink of the crater, and, after a course of four hours, reachedthe sea. The noise of the explosion ‘resembled that of alter-nate discharges of very large cannon and of musketry; and,what is well worthy of remark, it seemed much louder at sea,at a great distance from the island, than in sight of land, andnear the burning volcano.’ “The distance in a straight line from the volcano of St Vin-cent to the Rio Apura, near the mouth of the Nula, is 210 nauticalleagues. The explosions were consequently heard at a distanceequal to that between Vesuvius and Paris. This phenomenon, con-nected with a great number of facts observed in the Cordillerasof the Andes, shows how much more extensive the subterra-nean sphere of activity of a volcano is, than we are disposed toadmit from the small changes effected at the surface of the globe. |278|The detonations heard during whole days together in theNew World, 80, 100, or even 200 leagues distant from acrater, do not reach us by the propagation of sound throughthe air; they are transmitted to us by the ground. Thelittle town of Honda, on the banks of the Magdalena, is notless than 145 leagues from Cotopaxi; and yet in the great ex-plosions of this volcano, in 1744, a subterraneous noise washeard at Honda, and supposed to be discharges of heavy artil-lery. The monks of St Francis spread the news, that the townof Carthagena was bombarded by the English; and the intelli-gence was believed. Now the volcano of Cotopaxi is a cone, morethan 1800 toises above the basin of Honda, and rises from a table-land, the elevation of which is more than 1500 toises above thevalley of the Magdalena. In all the colossal mountains ofQuito, of the provinces of Los Pastos, and of Popayan, crevicesand valleys without number are interposed. It cannot be ad-mitted, under these circumstances, that the noise could betransmitted through the air, or by the superior surface of theglobe, and that it came from that point, where the coneand crater of Cotopaxi are placed. It appears probable, thatthe higher part of the kingdom of Quito and the neigh-bouring Cordilleras, far from being a group of distinct vol-canoes, constitute a single swollen mass, an enormous volcanicwall, stretching from south to north, and the crest of whichexhibits a surface of more than six hundred square leagues.Cotopaxi, Tunguragua, Antisana, and Pichincha, are placed onthis same vault, on this raised ground. The fire issues some-times from one, sometimes from another of these summits.The obstructed craters appear to be extinguished volcanoes;but we may presume, that, while Cotopaxi or Tunguragua haveonly one or two eruptions in the course of a century, the fireis not less continually active under the town of Quito, underPichincha and Imbaburu. “Advancing toward the north, we find, between the volcanoof Cotopaxi and the town of Honda, two other systems of vol-canic mountains, those of Los Pastos and of Popayan. Theconnection of these systems was manifested in the Andes in anincontestible manner by a phenomenon, which I have already had |279|occasion to notice. Since the month of November 1796, a thickcolumn of smoke had issued from the volcano of Pasto, west of thetown of that name, and near the valley of Rio Guaytara. Themouths of the volcano are lateral, and placed on its western de-clivity, yet during three successive months the column rose somuch higher than the ridge of the mountain, that it was con-stantly visible to the inhabitants of the town of Pasto. Theyrelated to us their astonishment, when, on the 4th of February1797, they observed the smoke disappear in an instant, withoutfeeling any shock whatever. At that very moment, sixty-fiveleagues to the south, between Chimborazo, Tunguragua, andthe Altar (Capac Urcu,) the town of Riobamba was overthrownby the most dreadful earthquake of which tradition has trans-mitted the history. Is it possible to doubt from this coincidenceof phenomena, that the vapours issuing from the small aperturesor ventanillas of the volcano of Pasto, had an influence on thepressure of those elastic fluids, which shook the ground of thekingdom of Quito, and destroyed in a few minutes thirty orforty thousand inhabitants? “In order to explain these great effects of volcanic reactions, and to prove, that the group or system of the volcanoes of theWest India Islands may sometimes shake the continent, it wasnecessary to cite the Cordillera of the Andes. Geological rea-soning can be supported only on the analogy of facts that arerecent, and consequently well authenticated: and in what otherregion of the globe could we find greater, and at the sametime more varied volcanic phenomena, than in that double chainof mountains heaved up by fire? in that land, where Naturehas covered every summit and every valley with her wonders?If we consider a burning crater only as an insulated phenome-non, if we satisfy ourselves with examining the mass of stonysubstances which it has thrown up, the volcanic action at thesurface of the globe will appear neither very powerful nor veryextensive. But the image of this action swells in the mind,when we study the relations that link together volcanoes of thesame group; for instance, those of Naples and Sicily, of theCanary Islands, of the Azores, of the Caribbee Islands, of Mexi-co, of Guatimala, and of the table-land of Quito; when we |280|examine either the reactions of these different systems of volca-noes on one another, or the distance to which, by subterraneancommunications, they at the same moment shake the Earth*.”