EARTHQUAKE. 



143 



At fifteen minutes past twelve, at midnight, we had one heavy shock 

 of an earthquake. I heard the door shake and my bed move as though 

 some person had taken hold of one of the posts and given it a violent 

 jerk. The people in the next room hurried out, and the whole popula- 

 tion was up in a moment. The scraping of matches and grasping of 

 candles was terrible. The dogs howled in the most mournful way all 

 over the city ; horses rushed round the corral as though frightened half 

 to death. The atmosphere was filled with a strong odor of sulphur. 

 The night was clear and starlight, the thermometer standing at 12°. The 

 population trembled in silence expecting the great Andes would again 

 shake ; but the night continued calm. 



Throughout our route we have observed a great work of displacement 

 going on. The earth seems to be fashioning itself into shape. The 

 mountains are being carried off to the lowlands by the floods, and the 

 dry lands seem to be growing at the expense of the sea. 



In the morning we mounted our horses, and a number of persons 

 prepared to accompany the President entered the street. We were 

 told he had long since gone with the whole army at 4 o'clock. 



Many of the Indian girls and boys have followed the army Fami- 

 lies find great difficulty in .keeping servants from going off. It is 

 amusing to see troops of women following after the cavalry, sometimes 

 three on one horse, or two on a donkey, with kitchen utensils and bed- 

 room furniture, serving in the place of riding gear, but without any idea 

 that they are going to the frozen peaks of Potosi. 



There are a few foreigners in Cochabamba— -English, French, German, 

 and Scotch ; some of them engaged in mining. All expect to make 

 fortunes very soon ; but say they have been thirty and forty years in the 

 country, and are poorer now than when they came. A hard-working, 

 cheerful, honest Scotchman, who had been a number of years in a 

 woollen factory in New York, told me the most unfortunate thing he 

 ever did was to leave the United States. 



The wages paid the Indians for mining silver varies according to the 

 value and hardness of the veins — from twelve to sixty dollars the yard. 

 The mines containing water are cleared by the means of llama skin 

 buckets, passed from hand to hand. This required a number of Indians, 

 working day and night. If a man could not make his fortune with a 

 corn-shelling machine in this country, he would very much astonish the 

 natives by the use of such a convenient implement. 



The merchants of Cochabamba send off every week a supply of goods 

 to the valley of Clisa, a short distance to the southeast of this city. 

 The Indians from the surrounding country come in on Sunday to buy 



