which destroyed the Town of Caraccas in 1812. 275 
There remained a duty to be fulfilled towards the dead, 
enjoined at once by piety and the dread of infection. It being 
impossible to inter so many thousand corpses, half-buried under 
the ruins, commissaries were apjx)inted to burn the bodies : and 
for this purpose, funeral piles were erected between the heaps 
of ruins. This ceremony lasted several days. Amid so many 
public calamities, the people devoted themselves to those reli- 
gious duties, which they thought were the most fitted to appease 
the wrath of Heaven. Some, assembling in procession, sung 
funeral hymns ; others, in a state of distraction, confessed them- 
selves aloud in the streets. In this town was now repeated 
what had been remarked in the province of Quito, after the 
tremendous earthquake of 1797 ; a number of marriages were 
contracted between persons, who had neglected for many years 
to sanction their union by the sacerdotal benediction. Children 
found parents, by whom they had never till then been acknow- 
ledged ; restitutions were promised by persons, who had never 
been accused of fraud ; and families, who had long been ene- 
mies, were drawn together by the tie of common calamity. If 
this feeling seemed to calm the passions of some, and open the 
heart to pity, it had a contrary effect on others, rendering them 
more rigid and inhuman, 
Shocks as violent as those which, in the space of one 
minute overthrew the city of Caraccas, could not be confined 
to a small portion of the continent. Their fatal effects extend- 
ed as far as the provinces of Venezuela, Varinas, and Maracay- 
bo, along the coast ; and still more to the inland mountains. 
La Guayra, Mayquetia, Antimano, Baruta, La Vega, San Fe- 
lipe, and Merida, were almost entirely destroyed. The number 
of the dead exceeded four or five thousand at La Guayra, and 
at the town of San Felipe, near the copper-mines of Area. It 
appears, that it was on a line running east north-east, and west 
south-v/est, from La Guayra and Caraccas to the lofty moun- 
tains of Niquitao and Merida, that the violence of the earth- 
quake was principally directed. It was felt in the kingdom of 
* The duration of the earthquake, that is to say the whole of the movements 
of undulation and rising which occasioned the horrible catastrophe of the 26th o|’ 
March 1812, was estimated by some at 50", by others at 1 ' 12" 
