EFFECTS PEODUCED UPON BUILDINGS. 127 



and, therefore, in order to obtain space, safety, and comfort, 

 the houses of the wealthy surround court after court, filled 

 with flowers, and cooled with fountains, connected one 

 with another with wide passages which give a vista from 

 garden to garden.' 



History would indicate that houses of this type have 

 been arrived at as the results of experience, for it is said 

 that when the inhabitants of South America first saw the 

 Spaniards building tall houses, they told them they were 

 building their own sepulchres.^ 



In Jamaica, we find that even as early as 1692 ex- 

 perience had taught the Spaniards to construct low houses, 

 which withstood shakings better than the tall ones.^ 



In Caraccas, which has been called the city of earth- 

 quakes, it is said that the earthquakes cause an average 

 yearly damage amounting to the equivalent of a ^er capita 

 tax of four dollars. To reduce this impost to a minimum 

 much attention is paid to construction. 'Projecting 

 basement corners (giving the house a slightly pyramidal 

 appearance) have been found better than absolutely per- 

 pendicular walls ; mortised corner-stones and roof beams 

 have saved many lives when the central walls have split 

 from top to bottom; vaults and key-stone arches, no 

 matter how massive, are more perilous than common 

 wooden lintels, and there are not many isolated buildings 

 in the city. In many streets broad iron girders, riveted 

 to the wall, about a foot above the house door, run from 

 house to house along the front of an entire square. Turret- 

 like brick chimneys, with iron top ornaments, would ex- 

 pose the architect to the vengeance of an excited mob ; 

 the roofs are flat, or flat terraced ; the chimney flues 

 terminate near the eaves in a perforated lid.'* 



» Phil Trails., li. 1760. 2 jj^^^ xviii. 



• ' The City of Earthquakes,' H. D. Warner, Atlantic Monthly, 

 March 1883. 



7 



