EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES. 389 
of the chapel wall. Her house was uninjured. All 
through the city the loss of life was very great; six hun¬ 
dred Spaniards perished, and the loss of Indios and Negroes 
was far greater. In the morning the remains of the city 
hardly appeared above the trees, rocks, and mud of the 
avalanche. It was then that the disheartened survivors 
decided to remove a league eastward, to the present 
Antigua. 
The earthquake did not destroy the city, still less 
was there an eruption of water from the volcano; but 
the crater of the long-extinct cone had been filled with 
the rains, and the tremor shattered the loose dam of the 
crater-lip and let the great body of water down the steep 
side of the mountain. There was water in the crater 
long before, and the crater to-day shows marks of the 
broken wall and emptied lake. The destruction of the 
city was considered a judgment of Heaven upon Dona 
Beatriz for certain impious remarks made in her bereave¬ 
ment, and it was with difficulty that her family were 
able to bury her remains in consecrated ground. 
On May 23, 1575, San Salvador (Cuscatlan) was de¬ 
stroyed by an earthquake which also greatly damaged 
Antigua. Afterwards the latter city had an experience 
that would have discouraged the people of any Northern 
town, for in 1576 and 1577 it was badly shaken, and on 
Dec. 23, 1586, destroyed. Then it was rebuilt enough to 
be again shattered on Feb. 18, 1651, and again on Feb. 12, 
1689, and Sept. 29, 1717. The day after this last shock 
Antigua was destroyed completely; but for all that, on 
March 4, 1751, the chronicler writes “many ruins,” and 
then the centre of disturbance goes southward for a 
while. In April, 1765, several towns were destroyed in 
