THE STORY IN DETAIL.
A series of quickly succeeding earthquakes shook the City of Panama on the evening of May 27th. They were slight in character, though distinguished by peculiar rotatory effects, turning natural objects half way round, and producing curious effects upon pedestrians who became dizzy under their influence. These seemed to have passed inland and to have accumulated in one severe shock at Miraflores, just as a number of waves in water, chasing each other, may combine to form a resultant wave higher than its components, and generally, if the confluence takes place in the right phase, of a height which is the sum of the heights of the smaller elements.
At any rate, a most violent disturbance occurred at the latter place, throwing down houses, and opening hillsides, which was followed by an alarming sinking of the ground. The railroad track disappeared, part of the canal walls were swallowed up, an immense influx of water from La Boca poured in, and the former site of the village became a lake-like expanse. No further shocks were felt, although doubtless considerable dislocation farther west had taken place, and the locks on the Canal beyond the Culebra Cut, in the direction of Gamboa, San Pablo, and Tavernilla were perhaps impaired. As if the hidden energies of the earth had become reinforced, and the subterranean fires had renewed their devastating fury, on the morning of the 28th a sharp upheaval of the ground at Tavernilla, in the old delta plane of the Chagres river, took place, almost immediately succeeded by as rapid a collapse and depression. This alarming operation of the ground was repeated, upon a titanic scale in the submerged delta plane between Pena Blanca and Gatun. It was reported that at first small monticules of rock, mud, and sand, appeared in the vicinity of Agua Clara, but these proved to be ephemeral elevations, subsiding foot by foot, until with one monstrous convulsion the whole ridge of hills between Limon Bay, to the west on the Canal line, and Barrage at the old French dam, slipped bodily into the sea, with unutterable sounds, the rocks as it were exploding with immeasurable violence. The discharge of the mountain mass into the oceanic depths caused terrific tidal waves to rush outward, and north and south, in colossal walls of water. One of these swept upon the panic-stricken inhabitants of Colon, its solid phalanx suddenly approaching from the sea, and in conjunction with earthquakes that had emptied the houses of the horrified occupants, bringing them all to the verge of madness, from sheer fear. The skies, as if engaged in some hideous conspiracy of destruction, with the moving earth, suddenly darkened. Deluges of water poured from the ebony and swollen clouds, lightning in incessant lines of quivering brilliancy shot from their lurid depths, and thunders intensified by a thousand reverberations, shook the recesses of the trembling hills.
It was not surprising that the spectators of these monstrous happenings, with their earth vanishing beneath their feet, the overcharged skies emptying the arsenals of their electric fires upon them, and the irresistible floods of the ocean, rising like avengers to overwhelm them, should have cast reason to the winds, and dumb with amazement, and insane almost with horror, should have sunk upon their knees, and waited for the engulfment, which was to them part of this preternatural ending of the world.
Few were strong enough to resist the frightful strain, and the woods and hills near Colon were filled with men and women in all states of frenzy. Some with cowering limbs and bowed heads awaited the summons of death or the call of Judgment, while others, lost alike to reason and moderation, nakedly execrated Heaven, or, stark mad, plunged weapons of defence into the bodies of prostrate women.
A few engineers at Colon had hastily constructed a camp on the higher hills towards the north, in which they were imitated by engineers at other points. These had communicated with the equipment at Colon, and it was from the latter city, which had at last accounts suffered little else than shocks of varying violence, but not destructive, that the first news had been sent.