The Boy Travellers in the Far East, Part Third / Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey to Ceylon and India; With Descriptions of Borneo, the Philippine Islands and Burmah

by Thomas Wallace Knox

The shock was not renewed, and after a while the alarm began to subside, but very slowly; word came that the cathedral had been thrown down, but luckily no one had been injured, as it was not the hour of service, and the custodians of the place were outside the doors at the moment of the shock. Several of the government buildings were destroyed, and it was thought many people had been crushed to death by the falling walls. It was impossible at that time to estimate the damage, but it was known to be very great.

The Doctor suggested that they would walk to the cathedral and see the extent of the ruin, and so the trio proceeded there. Every few steps they met dozens of people rushing wildly about in spite of the efforts of others to calm them. As they neared the cathedral the crowd became more and more dense, but happily less excited; it was a matter of some difficulty to get near the ruins, but by patience and perseverance Doctor Bronson and the youths worked their way to the front of the assemblage, and close up to the heap of brick and stone.

A part of the front had fallen, and with it one of the sides; but the rest of the walls remained standing, though there were great seams here and there that showed the work was seriously weakened, and would need to be torn down if it did not fall. The roof was crushed, owing to the loss of support on one side, and the rafters and the covering boards lay in a confused mass on the floor.

It began to grow dark, as the earthquake occurred a little before sunset, and our friends deemed it best to return to the hotel. They reached it in safety, and found it had not suffered greatly by the shaking it had received; like many of the houses of Manilla it was only one story in height, and the roof was lightly constructed, partly because the climate did not require a heavy one, and partly with a view to avoiding injury in the frequent disturbances to which Luzon is subject. The walls were cracked in a few places, and some of the tiles had been dislodged; but the proprietor thought that for twenty dollars he could repair all the damages.

Very naturally the conversation during the evening was devoted to earthquakes, and the boys accumulated a considerable stock of information on the subject. Fred turned to Mr. Jagor's book on the Philippines, and found that a great many earthquakes had been recorded in Manilla, the most fatal occurring in the years 1601, 1610, 1645, 1658, 1675, 1796, 1824, 1852, and 1863.[2] On the third of June, 1863, at thirty-one minutes past seven in the evening, after a day of tremendous heat, and while all Manilla was busy with preparations for a religious festival, the ground suddenly rocked to and fro with great violence; the firmest buildings reeled visibly, walls crumbled, and beams snapped in two. The shock lasted half a minute; but this little interval of time was enough to change the whole city into a mass of ruins, and to bury alive hundreds of its inhabitants. The cathedral, the barracks, the governor's residence, and all the public buildings were entirely destroyed; 400 persons were killed, 2000 were wounded, and the loss in money was estimated at $8,000,000. Forty-six public and 570 private buildings were thrown down, and all the houses that remained standing were more or less injured.

Frank asked the Doctor what was the cause of an earthquake, and whether the movements of the ground were always the same.

"The cause is difficult to get at," Doctor Bronson answered, "although the wisest men in all ages have studied the phenomenon, and endeavored to make a satisfactory theory for it. The ancient philosophers supposed that the winds became imprisoned in the earth, and, in their struggles to escape, gave rise to the upheaval of the land and the general convulsions. In the last century a French scientist contended that large quantities of bituminous and sulphurous matter became suddenly inflamed, and broke forth in violent fermentations. The still more modern theory is that the surface of the earth is only a thin crust over a mass of melted matter; that we live on the outside of a ball of liquid fire, which is liable to explode at any time, and put an end to us and all around. It is argued that the volcanoes now in activity are the outlets for this internal fire, and the occasional eruptions and earthquakes are the result of the fire seeking vent, in consequence of the clogging of the subterranean passages."

Frank thought the theory was not very comforting, and on the whole he preferred the older one. Fred agreed with him, and then the Doctor continued:

"The movements of the ground are not always the same in earthquakes; sometimes there will be only a single shock, or more frequently two about twenty seconds or even a minute apart, and again there will be a succession of shocks lasting for hours, or even days, at irregular intervals. The latter is oftener the case in South America than in other parts of the world; there the ground keeps up a rocking more or less continual for hours, and the later shocks are generally more violent than the earlier ones. Usually, however, the earthquake comes without warning, and is over in less than a minute, but in that space of time the destruction may be terrible.