Great Disasters and Horrors in the World's History

by Allen Howard Godbey

in the Philippines, Moluccas, and adjacent groups. Almost the only stone buildings are those of Spanish and Dutch settlers. China has apparently suffered less; but we learn that in 1556 two entire provinces were laid waste. The extent of the loss of life can not be estimated. The earth vomited ashes and flames, and ten great sea waves occurred in twenty-four hours.

Since European occupation of the East Indies, the convulsions have been frequent and alarming. The city of Manila was completely destroyed, with thousands of people, in 1645. Not one stone remained on another. Severe shocks occurred there again in 1699, 1796, 1825, 1852, and 1863. The last named wrecked the cathedral while filled with worshipers. The loss of property was from $8,000,000 to $10,000,000, or twice that of our Charleston earthquake. Four hundred people were killed. The shock lasted about half a minute, but opened many fissures, emitted volumes of gas and spoilt the river water. Again, in 1880, after some vague or irregular tremblings, there were several violent shocks. There was first experienced a peculiar sense of nausea and faintness, with a feeling of powerlessness or inability to flee. Horses stopped trembling in the streets, “standing with ears erect, with staring eyes, and stiffly extended legs, as though conscious of extraordinary peril.” The natives, heedless of appeals for help, wildly sought their own safety, or knelt devoutly invoking the saints. Clouds of dust filled the air, and heaps of ruin blocked the streets. The terrible hush that prevailed was broken only by an occasional cry for aid, or the crash of a ruined home. Portions of ground between great crevices were raised five or six feet; other parts fell as much. But the confusion rapidly subsided, and occupations of all sorts were resumed. One newspaper, true to the traditional enterprise of the fraternity, dragged its paraphernalia from its ruined building, and went to work in the middle of the street. An American publisher could hardly beat that.

But a region whose earthquakes have attracted greater attention, and have been more carefully noticed by scientific men than those of the eastern archipelago, is to be found along the western slope of the Andes, extending thence into Central America and Northern Venezuela and the West Indies.

Ever since the Spanish conquest, earthquakes have been numerous and violent in this whole region; and judging from the character of the native dwellings, the aborigines were for centuries accustomed to such movements. But it remained for Humboldt, in the last century, to give us a more careful description of some of the greater of these disasters.

Of the preceding disturbances, one of the most notable occurred in 1698, when the crater of the volcano Carguirazo fell in with a great crash during a shock of earthquake, and an area of twenty square miles was covered with mud containing numerous dead fish. A few years later, a similar occurrence north of Quito produced an epidemic of pernicious fevers.

But of the many great convulsions, that of Riobamba, in 1794, must rank as exceeding all within the range of authentic history, unless we except the one which destroyed Antioch in the year 526. The area disturbed was the great volcanic plain on which Quito stands.

No subterranean noise announced or accompanied the shock. Adjacent volcanoes were quiet; but the volcano of Pasto, sixty miles to the northward, had for three months been violently smoking; and at the moment the shock sixty miles away began, it suddenly stopped, nor did it again begin. The volcano of Cayambe, near Quito, seemed surrounded by meteorites. The pious people, alarmed at this manifestation of the divine wrath, formed a religious procession which walked through the principal streets. The result justified their belief in the potency of their prayers; for Quito remained unharmed. A great roar, since known as el gran ruido, was heard under the town some twenty minutes after the disaster; but at the scene of the latter it was not heard at all.

In the immediate vicinity of Riobamba, the destruction was fearful. The entire plain seemed rent into small independent fragments, which rose or sank at will. Humboldt tells that an eye-witness might have seen “fissures which alternately opened and closed, so that persons partially engulfed were saved by extending their arms, that they might not be swallowed up; portions of long trains of muleteers and laden mules disappearing in suddenly opening cross fissures, whilst other portions, by a hasty retreat, escaped the danger; vertical oscillations, by the non-simultaneous rising and sinking of adjoining portions of ground, so that persons standing in the choir of a church, sixteen feet above the pavement of the street, found themselves lowered to the level of the pavement without being thrown down; the sinking down of massive houses, with such an absence of disruption or dislocation that the inhabitants could open the doors of the interior, pass uninjured from room to room, light candles and debate with each other their chance of escape, during two days which elapsed before they were dug out; lastly, the entire disappearance of great masses of stones and building materials. The old town had possessed churches, convents, and houses of several stories; but in the places where they stood, we found, on tracing out among the ruins the former plan of the city, only stone heaps of from eight to twelve feet in height.”

Of some of the villages in the adjacent plain not a trace was left. They sunk bodily, and the earth closed over them. Of the others, only heaps of ruins were left.