CARTHAGO DELETA EST 487 



was much broken and the roof and side walls crumbled to 

 pieces. The Soledad suffered least, but its towers fell. The 

 most extraordinary ruin was that of the Carmen church, 

 where the whole top of one tower was broken squarely off and 

 thrown upside down on the railroad track, where it remained 

 as one solid piece, its four "feet" up in the air. This tower cap 

 was fully ten feet on a side and somewhat higher and as it 

 was not possible to remove it from the tracks without blast- 

 ing it to bits, and the authorities feared the effects of the 

 blast on the ruins while so many bodies remained unrecov- 

 ered, it was necessary to build a switch around it to permit 

 the passing of trains. The beautiful new Peace Palace, 

 not quite finished, which was to have been dedicated in a 

 few weeks, was levelled to the ground. 



As soon as there was the faintest gleam of light parties of 

 men with shovels and picks began to dig in every heap where 

 there was reason to suppose people were still alive, though 

 more often they found only corpses and all day long these 

 were carried through the streets in heaps and cartloads. 

 When the news reached San Jose on the night of the fourth, 

 partly by messengers as the wires near Cartago were down, 

 the President of the Republic, Don Cleto Gonzalez-Viquez, 

 started at once for Cartago with such doctors and supplies 

 as could be gathered at short notice, traveling by rail as far 

 as the train could run — there were fissures and cracks across 

 the tracks — and walking the rest of the way. During the 

 following day a number of soldiers arrived from San Jose, 

 some with shovels, crowbars and pickaxes to dig out the 

 wounded and dead, others with their guns and ball-cart- 

 ridges to patrol the streets. In the two nights we were in 

 the streets after the earthquake there was no disorder. The 

 people were quiet, orderly, there was little thieving and no 

 looting so far as we could see or hear and we heard no shoot- 

 ing. 



