Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror

by Richard Linthicum; Samuel Fallows; Trumbull White

The coast of Peru was visited by an earthquake in the year 1586, and again in 1687. On the first occasion the shock was accompanied by a great sea-wave eighty-four feet high, which inundated the country for two leagues inland. There was still another dreadful convulsion on this coast in 1746, when the sea twice retreated and dashed in again with a tremendous wave about eighty feet high, overwhelming Lima and four other seaports. A portion of the coast sank down, producing a new bay at Callao; and in several mountains in the neighborhood there were formed large fissures whence water and mud gushed forth. On May 24, 1751, the city of Concepcion, in Chili, was entirely swallowed up during an earthquake, and the sea rolled over its site. The ancient port was destroyed, and a new town was afterwards erected ten miles inland. The great sea-wave, which accompanied this earthquake, rolled in upon the shores of the island of Juan Fernandez, and overwhelmed a colony which had been recently established there. The coast near the ancient port of Concepcion was considerably raised on this occasion, and the high water mark now stands twenty-four feet below its former level.

The coast of Caracas and the adjacent island of Trinidad were violently convulsed in 1776, and the whole city of Cumana was reduced to ruins. The shocks were continued for upwards of a year, and were at first repeated almost hourly. There were frequent eruptions of sulphurous water from fissures in the ground, and an island in the Orinoco disappeared.

Rihamba must have stood, it would appear, almost immediately over the focus of the dreadful earthquake of February 4, 1797. This unfortunate city was situated in the district of Quito, not far from the base of the great volcano of Tunguragua. That mountain was probably the center of disturbance, and the shock was experienced with disastrous effects over a district of country extending about 120 miles from north to south and about sixty miles from east to west. Every town and village comprehended within this district was reduced to ruins. The shocks, however, were felt, though in a milder form, over a much larger area, extending upwards of 500 miles from north to south and more than 400 miles from east to west.

At Riobamba the shocks, which began at about eight o’clock in the morning, are said to have been vertical. Some faint idea may be formed of the extreme violence of this motion from the fact mentioned by Humboldt that the dead bodies of some of the inhabitants who perished were tossed over a small river to the height of several hundred feet, and landed on an adjacent hill.

Vertical movements, so powerful and so long continued, could not fail to produce an enormous displacement of the ground, and to be very destructive to all buildings which it sustained. The soil was rent, and, as it were, torn asunder and twisted in an extraordinary manner. Several of the fissures opened and closed again; many persons were engulfed in them; but a few saved themselves by simply stretching out their arms, so that, when the fissure closed, the upper parts of their bodies were left above the ground, thus admitting of their being easily extricated. In some instances whole cavalcades of horsemen and troops of laden mules disappeared in those chasms; while some few escaped by throwing themselves back from the edge of the cleft.

The amount of simultaneous elevation and depression of the ground was in some cases as much as twelve feet; and several persons who were in the choir of one of the churches escaped by simply stepping on the pavement of the street, which was brought up to a level with the spot where they stood. Instances occurred of whole houses sinking bodily into the earth, till their roofs were fairly underground; but so little were the buildings thus engulfed injured, that their inhabitants were able still to live in them, and by the light of flambeaux to pass from room to room, the doors opening and shutting as easily as before. The people remained in them, subsisting on the provisions they had in store, for the space of two days, until they were extricated safe and sound. With the majority of the inhabitants, however, it fared otherwise. The loss of life in the city, and throughout the district most convulsed, was enormous, 40,000 persons altogether having perished.

Of Riobamba itself the ruin was complete. When Humboldt took a plan of the place after the catastrophe, he could find nothing but heaps of stones eight or ten feet high; although the city had contained churches and convents, with many private houses several stories in height. The town of Quero was likewise entirely overthrown.

At Tacunga the ruin was nearly as thorough, not a building having been left standing save an arch in the great square, and part of a neighboring house. The churches of St. Augustin, St. Domingo, and La Merced were at the moment thronged with people hearing mass. Not one escaped alive. All were buried, along with the objects of their worship, under the ruins of their consecrated buildings. In several parts of the town and its neighborhood there were opened larger fissures in the ground, whence quantities of water poured forth. The village of St. Philip, near Tacunga, containing a school in which upwards of forty children were assembled at the time, disappeared bodily in a chasm. A great many other villages with their inhabitants were destroyed, by being either overthrown or engulfed.

Even at Quito, although so distant from the centre of the disturbance, a great deal of damage was done to the churches and other public buildings by the shock, several being wholly ruined. The private houses and other buildings of moderate height, however, were spared. The superstitious inhabitants of this fair city, having been greatly alarmed by an unwonted display of luminous meteors, had devoted the previous day to carrying in procession through their streets the graven images and relics of their saints, in the vain hope of appeasing divine wrath. They were doomed to learn by experience that these idols were powerless to protect even the consecrated edifices dedicated to their honor, and in which they were enshrined.

The Bay of Caracas was the scene of a dreadful earthquake in 1812. The city of Caracas was totally destroyed, and ten thousand of its inhabitants were buried beneath its ruins.