Ch. XVHL] incidents of the EAETHQUAKE. 299 



unsafe, were more or less occupied by people. Priests and 

 people aKke were buried in the ruius, many, of course, killed ; 

 others only maimed, but living, and their voices could be 

 heard amidst the stones and beams which covered the floor. 

 Energetic efforts were made to relieve them, and water was 

 conducted through the pipes of the broken organ ; but by 

 degrees the voices ceased, and they were dead. A fine 

 stone bridge across the Pasig was so damaged that it was 

 deemed unsafe to cross it, and it was closed, and still re- 

 mains in a dilapidated condition. 



Of course innumerable houses fell to the ground, and 

 even now many of them remain in nearly the same state as 

 they were left by the shock — unroofed, cracked, and fissured. 

 In one house which I visited I was assured that so great was 

 the oscillation that the chandelier in the dining-room, hang- 

 ing six feet down from the ceiling, swimg so violently as to 

 knock the ceiling on either side. A very fortunate circum- 

 stance was that at the hour at which the earthquake occurred 

 the European population had just finished dinner, and had 

 for the most part retired from the dining-room to the less 

 dangerous verandah. In many places in the town fissures 

 opened in the ground, which in some cases closed again. 

 In addition to the immense loss of private and public pro- 

 perty, the Government exchequer was seriously threatened 

 by the partial destruction and unroofing of the tobacco 

 stores. In these warehouses no less than 57,000 quintals of 

 tobacco were deposited, representing a value of two millions 

 of dollars ; and inasmuch as the disaster occurred during the 

 rainy season, this vast quantity of tobacco would all have been 

 partially or entirely ruined before precautions could possibly 

 have been taken to protect it, had it not singularly happened 

 that the event was succeeded by a week of unseasonably 



