EARTHQUAKE OF CAEACAS. 
451 
leagues round, during five months preceding the destruction 
of the capital. The 26th of March was a remarkably hot 
day. The air was calm, and the sky unclouded. It was 
Ascension-day and a great portion of the population was 
assembled m the churches. Nothing seemed to presage the 
calamities of the day. At seven minutes after four in the 
afternoon the first shock was felt. It was sufficiently forci- 
ble to make the bells of the churches toll ; and it lasted five 
or sis seconds. During that interval the ground was in a 
continual undulating movement, and seemed to heave uplike 
a boiling liquid. The danger was thought to be past, when 
a tremendous subterranean noise was heard, resembling the 
rolling of thunder, but louder and of longer continuance than 
that heard within the tropics in the time of storms. This 
noise preceded a perpendicular motion of three oi four 
seconds, followed by an undulatory movement somewhat 
onger. T he shocks were _in opposite directions, proceeding 
from north to south, and from east to west. Nothin o- could 
resist the perpendicular movement and the transverse” undu- 
ations. The town of Caracas was entirely overthrown, and 
between nine and ten thousand of the inhabitants were 
buried under the ruins of the houses and churches. The 
procession of Ascension-day had not yet bemin to pass 
through the streets, but the crowd was so great within the 
churches that nearly three or four thousand persons were 
crushed by the fall of the roofs. The explosion was most 
violent towards the north, in that part of the town situated 
nearest the mountain of Avila and the Silla. The churches 
of la Trinidad and Alta Gracia, which were more than one 
hundred and fifty feet high, and the naves of which were 
supported by pillars of twelve or fifteen feet diameter were 
reduced to a mass of ruins scarcely exceeding five or six 
feet in elevation. The sinking of 'tho ruins has been so 
considerable that there now scarcely remain any vestiges 
of pillars or columns. The barracks, called el Quartel de 
ban Carlos, situated north of the church of la Trinidad 
on the road from tho custom-house of La Pastora, almost 
entirely disappeared. A regiment of troops of the line, 
under arms, ana m readiness to join the procession, was, 
with the exception of a few meu, buried beneath the 
linns or tho barracks. Nine-tenths of tho fine city of 
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