312 JOURNAL, 
attached to his country, Old Spain, and firmly resolved to have 
nothing more to do with war. He was with Romana in the north of 
Germany and Denmark; embarked with him in the Victory, fol- 
lowed his fortunes, and at length came to Chile with the expedition, 
when the Maria Isabella, now the O’ Higgins, came out, and he him- 
self was taken prisoner at Valdivia. 
Don Fausto then reports from Quillota, that he and some friends 
were in the placa, mixing with the people in the festivities of the 
eve of the octave of San Martin, the tutelar saint of Quillota.* The 
market-place was filled with booths and bowers of myrtle and roses ; 
under which feasting and revelry, dancing, fiddling, and masking, 
were going on, and the whole was a scene of gay dissipation, or 
rather dissoluteness. The earthquake came, —§in an instant all was 
changed. Instead of the sounds of the viol and the song, there arose 
a cry of “ Misericordia! Misericordia!” and a beating of the breast, 
and a prostration of the body; and the thorns were plaited into 
crowns, which the sufferers pressed on their heads till the blood 
streamed down their faces, the roses being now trampled under- 
foot. Some ran to their falling houses, to snatch thence children 
forgotten in the moments of festivity, but dear in danger. The 
priests wrung their hands over their fallen altars, and the chiefs 
of the people fled to the hills. Such was the night of the nineteenth 
at Quillota. 
The morning of the 20th exhibited a scene of greater distress. 
Only twenty houses and one church remained standing of that large 
town. All the ovens had been destroyed, and there was no bread: 
the governor had fled, and the people cried out that his sins had 
brought down the judgment. Some went so far as to accuse the 
government at Santiago, and to say its tyranny had awakened God’s 
* Don Fausto calls it San Martin de Tours; if so, it was the octave, not the eve, 
because St. Martin of Tours has his festivals on the 4th July, 13th December, and 11th 
of November : the last is the principal festival; therefore the octave would fall on the 
nineteenth. If it were the eve of the octave, then the saint must be the Pope Saint 
Martin, whose feast is held on the 12th November. 
