“I walked along the fine avenue of poplars (the Alameda) for about a hundred yards, and turned into the right; a few paces brought me into the nearest street, where I was absolutely struck dumb and immovable with horror at the scene which presented itself.
“As I gazed along the whole length of that street, not a single house was there to be seen standing; all was a confused mass of ‘adobes,’ beams, and bricks.
“The street was filled upon a level with what remained of the walls of the houses on either side, which at a glance accounted for the fearful number of victims—upwards of twelve thousand—entombed beneath the ruins of that fatal 20th of March, 1861.
“From the plaza I turned towards the north, and there saw the only edifice, or rather portion of one, that had remained entire: it was the theatre, which, having had a considerable quantity of timber in its construction, remained partially uninjured. I ascended to the roof, and got a fine view of the entire city. For a mile around on every side nothing but a chaotic mass of ruins was visible,—the débris of a large city razed to the ground in an instant! On the left were the ruins of what had been once a fine church, ‘Santo Domingo,’ the altar and a portion of the arch being the only remaining traces of its former sacred character.
“Looking away towards the south might be seen the still partially-erect walls of ‘San Francisco,’ another fine church, which boasted of the largest bell in the city. This bell was pitched from its position to a considerable distance by the shock, and stuck between two towers on the north side of the building, where it may be still seen, wedged in so firmly that all attempts at removing it simply by lifting have failed. On approaching ‘Santo Domingo,’ in order to examine it more closely, I saw lying about its ‘precinct’ several human skeletons, and portions of the human form protruding from beneath the masses of masonry. I was almost sickened by the sight, and moved quickly away. In many parts of the city I saw the same horrible exhibition,—skulls, arms, legs, &c., lying about, some still undecayed, especially near a convent on the south side of the city.”
A gentleman who was buried under the ruins, and afterwards extricated, in describing his experiences, says,—
“I stood at a table (about half-past eight, P. M.) in the centre of the room, and was in the act of lighting a cigar, when the shock, preceded by a low, rumbling noise, was first felt. It was slow for a moment in the beginning; but from the noise, I concluded it was going to be something more than ordinary; so I rushed into the street, and ran down the middle, intending, if possible, to reach the Alameda. I had run only some twenty paces when I felt as if I had been struck a heavy blow on the back of the head, and was borne down to the earth in a moment. I knew that the town was infested with rats and vermin of all kinds, and that, sooner or later, they would not fail to find me out amongst the thousands of victims entombed, like myself, beneath at least six feet depth of ‘adobes.’”
Mr. Hinchliff, who visited Buenos Ayres, in writing of the earthquake, says,—
“M. Bravart, a French savant of some eminence, who had foretold the destruction of the city by an earthquake, was himself among the victims. The principal watchmaker in Buenos Ayres, which is about eight hundred miles distant from the scene of this awful calamity, told me a curious fact in connection with it. One day he observed with astonishment that his clocks suddenly differed twelve seconds from his chronometers; and when the news arrived, about a fortnight later, he found that the pendulums of the former had been arrested at the moment of the destruction of Mendoza.”
Since my return to the United States I received a letter from Don Guillermo Buenaparte, of San Juan, in which he spoke at considerable length of the earthquake. He wrote me that when he approached Mendoza, three or four days after the catastrophe, the stench rising from the dead bodies beneath the ruins was perceived at a distance of several miles from the town. He found gauchos from the plains robbing the wounded, and searching among the rubbish for plunder. When he reached the public square of the city he found more than a hundred women, all mentally affected, many entirely bereft of their reason; all were praying on their knees, asking the Holy Mary to intercede for the lost souls of their countrymen who had, prior to the fall of the doomed city, united with others from San Luis, and had attacked and butchered many of their political enemies (some four hundred) of San Juan. The unfortunate lunatics seemed to think that God had overthrown their city to avenge the murder of San Juaninos. A political conspiracy was being planned in the city at the time it was destroyed.