The morning was magnificent. At 9:35 A.M. there was a loud underground roar, like distant thunder, followed at once by a tremendous shock, which overthrew churches, convents, and many others of the finest buildings of the city. This shock lasted five seconds. There was two minutes pause, during which thousands of shrieking people rushed about the streets to escape the falling ruins. Then came a second shock, and two minutes later a third. In five minutes the Portuguese capital had become a ruin, filled with fifty thousand corpses.
The churches were filled with people, it being All Saints’ Day, and the hour of high mass. The great cathedrals were but death-traps. All apparatus that could be of use in the work of rescue was buried in the wreck. The streets were crowded with sobbing multitudes, calling in vain for friends and kin.
At the sea-shore was the magnificent quay, Cays de Prada. It was built entirely of marble, and just finished at an immense expense; and on it, after the first shock, a vast concourse of people had collected as a place of safety, having left the city to escape the fall of the houses. But it proved the most fatal spot in the vicinity; for at the next shock the earth opened and instantly swallowed up the whole quay, with the multitude which had there assembled; and so completely were the whole retained by the closing of the earth, that not a single dead body ever rose again to the surface. A great number of small boats and other vessels near the quay, and filled with people as a place of safety, were also precipitated into the yawning vortex; and it is stated that not a single fragment of any of these boats was ever seen afterwards. When the disaster was over, soundings were taken. Six hundred feet of water rolled above the marble quay and its countless victims. St. Ubes was swallowed up by sea-waves, while rocks fell from its promontory into the sea.
Then the sea suddenly retired, leaving the bed of the harbor exposed. A moment later a gigantic wave, fifty feet in height, rolled in upon the doomed city.
Two hours later fire broke out in the wreck, and driven by a high wind, swept the ruins, and also the houses left standing. The furious flames raged three days, burning hundreds imprisoned in the wreck. Every element seemed in conspiracy against the city.
In addition to threatened famine and pestilence among the survivors, the rabble, as in Calabria, showed a disposition to indiscriminate plunder. Upon this “the King gave orders immediately for gallows to be placed all round the city, and after about one hundred executions, amongst which were some English sailors, the evils stopped.” The King was very prompt and energetic, initiating every practicable system of relief, and having the really needy cared
