From Humboldt’s Travels.

EARTHQUAKE AT CARACCAS, IN 1812.

At this period the province of Venezuela laboured under great drought; not a drop of rain had fallen at Caraccas, or to the distance of 311 miles around, during the five months which preceded the destruction of the capital.

The 26th March was excessively hot: the air was calm and the sky cloudless.

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

The calamities of the day were preceded by no indications of danger.

At seven minutes after four in the evening the first commotion was felt.

It was so strong as to make the bells of the churches ring.

It lasted from five to six seconds, and was immediately followed by another shock of from ten to twelve seconds, during which the ground was in a continual state of undulation, and heaved like a fluid under ebullition.

The danger was thought to be over, when a prodigious subterranean noise was heard, resembling the rolling of thunder, but louder and more prolonged than that heard within the tropics during thunder-storms.

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

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

It was impossible that any thing could resist the motion from beneath upwards, and the undulations crossing each other.

The city of Caraccas was completely overthrown.— Thousands of the inhabitants (from nine to ten thousand) were buried under the ruins of the churches and houses.

The procession had not yet set out; but the crowd in the churches was so great that nearly three or four thousand individuals were crushed to death by the falling in of the vaulted roofs.

The explosion was stronger on the north side of the town, in the part nearest the mountain of Avila and the Silla.

The churches of the Trinity and Alta Gracia, which were more than a hundred and fifty feet in height, and of which the nave was supported by pillars from twelve to fifteen feet in diameter, left a mass of ruins nowhere higher than five or six feet.

The sinking of the ruins has been so great that at present hardly any vestige remains of the pillars and columns.

The barracks called El Quartel de San Carlos, situated farther to the north of the church of the Trinity, on the road to the custom-house de la Pastora, almost entirely disappeared.

A regiment of troops of the line, which was assembled in it under arms to join in the procession, was, with the exception of a few individuals, buried under this large building.

Nine-tenths of the fine town of Caraccas were entirely reduced to ruins.

The houses which did not fall, as those of the street of San Juan, near the Capuchin Hospital, were so cracked that no one could venture to live in them.

The effects of the earthquake were not quite so disastrous in the southern and western parts of the town, between the great square and the ravine of Caraguata;—there the cathedral, supported by enormous buttresses, remains standing.

“In estimating the number of persons killed in the city of Caraccas at nine or ten thousand, we do not include those unhappy individuals who were severely wounded, and perished several months after from want of food and proper attention.

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

The thick cloud of dust, which rose above the ruins and darkened the air like a mist, had fallen again to the ground; the shocks had ceased; never was there a finer or quieter night,—the moon, nearly at the full, illuminated the rounded summits of the Silla, and the serenity of the heavens contrasted strongly with the state of the earth, which was strewn with ruins and dead bodies.

Mothers were seen carrying in their arms children whom they hoped to recall to life; desolate females ran through the city in quest of a brother, a husband, or a friend, of whose fate they were ignorant, and whom they supposed to have been separated from them in the crowd.

The people pressed along the streets, which now could only be distinguished by heaps of ruins arranged in lines.

“All the calamities experienced in the great earthquakes of Lisbon, Messina, Lima and Riobamba were repeated on the fatal day of the 26th March, 1812.

The wounded, buried under the ruins, implored the assistance of the passers-by with loud cries, and more than two thousand of them were dug out.

Never was pity displayed in a more affecting manner; never, we may say, was it seen more ingeniously active than in the efforts made to succour the unhappy persons whose groans reached the ear.— There was an entire want of instruments adapted for digging up the ground and clearing away the ruins, and the people were obliged to use their hands for the purpose of disinterring the living.

Those who were wounded, as well as the patients who had escaped from the hospitals, were placed on the bank of the little river of Guayra, where they had no other shelter than the foliage of the trees.

Beds, linen for dressing their wounds, surgical instruments, medicines, in short, every thing necessary for their treatment, had been buried in the ruins.

During the first days nothing could be procured,—not even food.

Within the city water became equally scarce.

The commotion had broken the pipes of the fountains, and the falling in of the earth had obstructed the springs which supplied them. To obtain water it was necessary to descend as far as the Rio Guayra, which was considerably swelled, and there were no vessels for drawing it.

“There remained to be performed towards the dead a duty imposed alike by piety and the dread of infection.

As it was impossible to inter so many thousands of bodies half-buried in the ruins, commissioners were appointed to burn them.

Funeralpiles were erected among the heaps of rubbish.

This ceremony lasted several days.

Amid so many public calamities, the people ardently engaged in the religious exercises which they thought best adapted to appease the anger of Heaven.

Some walked in bodies chanting funeral-hymns, while others, in a state of distraction, confessed themselves aloud in the streets.

In this city was now repeated what had taken place in the province of Quito after the dreadful earthquake of the 4th February, 1797.

Marriages were contracted between persons who for many years had neglected to sanction their union by the sacerdotal blessing.

Children found parents in persons who had till then disavowed them; restitution was promised by individuals who had never been accused of theft; and families who had long been at enmity drew together, from the feeling of a common evil.

But while in some this feeling seemed to soften the heart and open it to compassion, it had a contrary effect on others, rendering them more obdurate and inhuman.

In great calamities vulgar minds retain still less goodness than strength; for misfortune acts like the pursuit of literature and the investigation of nature, which exercise their happy influence only upon a few, giving more warmth to the feelings, more elevation to the mind, and more benevolence to the character.”