604 



THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE 



Photo from Rear Admiral F. Singer, U. S. N. 

 A succession of shocks during April so frightened the people of Cartago that they camped 

 out m the parks and open places during the earlier weeks of the month. Gradually the 

 shocks subsided and the people then returned to their houses to be overwhelmed by the ter- 

 rible quake of May 4 (see page 501). 



THK CATASTROPHE OF MAY 4 



Meanwhile the underground forces 

 were not inactive, even though the pubHc 

 ceased to pay due attention to the warn- 

 ings of the seismological apparatus or 

 these had stopped working. On Wed- 

 nesday, May 4, twelve minutes after 

 noon, a premonitory oscillation was felt 

 at San Jose and Cartago ; but if it again 

 awakened the fears of ^he timorous ones, 

 it was not enough to render them sus- 

 picious of the possibility of worse hap- 

 penings. 



At 6.50 p. m., when the early tropical 

 darkness had sent most people' home to 

 prepare for their nightly rest, a sudden 

 shock, coming apparently from beneath 

 their feet, converted Cartago in an in- 

 stant into an immense heap of rubbish, 

 from which rose in the midst of deafen- 

 ing crashes and underground noises the 

 death shrieks of hundreds of victims and 

 the agonizing appeals of living ones im- 

 prisoned beneath the debris of their 

 abodes. 



A point on which most witnesses 

 agree is the sharpness of the most 

 destructive shock; it was followed in- 

 deed by a series of oscillations which 

 lasted for several seconds, but the dis- 

 aster was a thing of the first impulse 

 and of imperceptible duration. 



Of the people that were taken alive 

 from the ruins, only a few had had time 

 to follow their instinct or the inspira- 

 tion of a rare presence of mind and to 

 glide under a table or bedstead; among 

 the dead a merchant was found with the 

 pen still between his fingers, crushed flat 

 upon the ledger in which he had been 

 writing; a shoemaker lay with his arm 

 stretched above his head, hammer in 

 hand, as in the act of striking the sole. 



No pen could picture the horror of 

 the situation; the uninjured running 

 about blindly through the debris, too 

 dazed to know what to do ; the electric- 

 light plant out of commission, and every 

 lantern in the place smashed, so that 

 everything was wrapped in complete 



