INHUMATION OF THE WOUNDED. 161 
ed along the streets, which now could only be dis- 
tinguished by heaps of ruins arranged in lines. 
«« All the calamities experienced in the great earth- 
quakes of Lisbon, Messina, Lima, and Riobamba, 
were repeated on the fatal day of the 26th March 
1812. The wounded, buried under the ruins, im- 
plored the assistance of the passers by with loud. 
cries, and more than two thousand of them were 
dug out. Never was pity displayed in a more af- 
fecting manner; never, we may say, was it seen 
more ingeniously active, than in the efforts made to 
succour the unhappy persons whose groans reached 
the ear. There was an entire want of instruments 
adapted for digging up the ground and clearing 
away the ruins, and the people were obliged to use 
their hands for the purpose of disinterring the living. 
Those who were wounded, as well as the patients 
who had escaped from the hospitals, were placed on 
the bank of the little river of Guayra, where they 
had no other shelter than the foliage of the trees. 
Beds, linen for dressing their wounds, surgical in- 
struments, medicines, in short every thing necessary 
for their treatment, had been buried in the ruins. 
During the first days nothing could be procured,— 
not even food. Within the city water became equal- 
ly scarce. The commotion had broken the pipes of 
the fountains, and the falling in of the earth had 
obstructed the springs which supplied them. To 
obtain water it was necessary to descend as far as 
the Rio Guayra, which was considerably swelled, 
and there were no vessels for drawing it. 
_ There remained to be performed towards the 
dead a duty imposed alike by piety and the dread of 
infection. As it was impossible to inter so many 
K 
