140 INHUMATION OF THE WOUNDED. 



CHAP. xiil. above the ruins and darkened the air like a mist, had 

 The succeed, fallen again to the ground ; the shocks had ceased ; 

 iiig night never was there a finer or quieter night, — the moon, 

 jiearly at tlie full, illuminated tlie rounded summits of 

 the Silla, and the serenity of the heavens contrasted 

 strongly with the state of the earth, which was strewed 

 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 sepa- 

 rated from them in the crowd. The people pressed along 

 the streets, wliich now could only be distinguished by 

 heaps of ruins arranged in lines, 

 rescue of " All the calamities experienced in the great earth- 



ti)f wouuded. quakes of Lisbon, Messina, Lima, and Riobaml)a, were 

 repeated on the fatal day of the 26tli ]\Lirch 1812. The 

 wounded, buried under the ruins, imploi'ed the assistance 

 of the passers-by with loud cries, and more than two 

 thousand of them were dug out. Never was pity dis- 

 plaj^ed 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 instru- 

 ments adapted for digging up the ground and clearing 

 away tlie ruins, and the peojile were ol)liged to use 

 their hands for tlie purpose of disinterring the living. 

 Wretched Thoso who were wounded, as well as the patients who 

 condition of ]^^^ escaped from the hosi)itals, wei*e placed on the bank 

 Uie wounded. »,,?, . r j-^ ^ i ii i 



ot the little river or Guayra, where they liad no other 



slielter 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. Witliin the city 

 water became equally scarce. Tlie commotion had 

 iiroken 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 



