366 REVIEWS — NOTES ON CENTRAL AMERICA. 



falling on the anniversary of the victory of Alvarado, the town overflowed, not 

 ouly with people gathered horn within a radius of fifty leagues, but with foreigners 

 and merchants from every part of Central America. At these fairs the accounts 

 between dealers were adjusted, and contracts, sales, and purchases made for the 

 ensuing year ; the whole concurrence and bustle contrasting strangely with the 

 usual monotony and quiet. 



" With the exception of the central and paved part of the city, San Salvador was 

 eminently sylvan, being literally embowered in tropical fruit-trees. The red-roofed 

 dwellings, closely shut in with evergreen hedges of cactus, shadowed over by palm 

 and orange-trees, with a dense background of broad-leaved plaintains, almost sink- 

 ing beneath their heavy clusters of golden fruit, were singularly picturesque and 

 beautiful. In recalling the picture, it is sad to think that all is now abandoned 

 and desolote ; that the great square is deserted, and that a silence, unbroken even 

 by the fall of water from the lately glittering fountains, reigns over the ruined and 

 deserted, but once busy and beautiful city of ' Our Saviour' !" 



The treacherous nature of the site, that tempted by its fertile soil, 

 the builders of the Capital to rear a City characterised by so many 

 features of utility and beauty, in the vicinity of the "living" vc lcano, 

 was evinced by repeated shocks of earthquakes in the sixteenth and 

 seventeenth centuries, as well as by one in 1839, which did such damage 

 to the city as then to lead many to think of abandoning it. A more 

 dreadful manifestation of the power of the destroyer, however, was 

 needed, before the people were at length affected by a terror sufficiently 

 profound to overcome all the strength of local attachment and vested 

 interests, and compel them to resolve on seeking a safer site whereon to 

 found a new Capital, in imitation of the example of the citizens of 

 Guatemala: originally built at a place now called the Antigua, or Old 

 City. The earthquake which destroyed the city of San Salvador took 

 place so recently as the month of April, 1854 ; and by a succession 

 of sudden and terrific shocks, lasting altogether no more^than ten 

 seconds, levelled the entire city in ruins. The following contemporary 

 account of this fearful catastrophe is derived from the Boletin Extra- 

 ordinaries del Gobierno del Salvador, published only about a fortnight 

 after the event which it records. The festival of Easter fell in that 

 year on the 16th of April, and it was immediately after the celebra- 

 tion of Easter Sunday's commemorative services, associated with 

 the miraculous passing of the destroyer over the ancient cities of the 

 Nile, when all the first born of Egypt perished, that sudden destruc- 

 tion came on the long threatened Capital of San Salvador. The 

 style of the bulletin which records this terrible catastrophe partakes 

 in no degree, it will be seen, of the dry formality which we are 

 accustomed to in such official documents. 



"The night of the 16th of April, 1854, will ever be one of sad and bitter memory 

 for the people of Salvador. On that unfortunate night, our happy and beautiful 



