THE DESTRUCTION OF SAN SALVADOR.
CARL SCHERZER.
[Dr. Carl Scherzer, in his “Travels in the Free States of Central America,” gives a graphic picture of the destruction, in 1854, of the city of San Salvador by an earthquake, as witnessed by his friend Dr. Wagner, whose description of the event is well worth repeating. This city, which stands on a plateau about two thousand feet above the Pacific, was built by the Spaniards in 1528, and, with the exception of Guatemala, was the neatest and handsomest of Central American cities, possessing several handsome churches, a new university, and numerous attractive residences.]
On the 12th and 13th of April, 1854, there was heard in the upper part of the city, towards the southwest, a hollow, subterranean, rumbling noise, which recurred at short intervals and continued for several minutes, appearing to come from the mountains which form a kind of large semi-circle at the foot of the volcano, but there was no shock whatever. On the Good Friday, at half-past seven in the morning, two slight shocks, quickly succeeding each other, were felt, and about ten minutes afterwards a rather stronger one. The roof and walls of my cottage shook, without my at first perceiving the cause; but a young Spaniard, who waited on me, said, quietly, “Es un temblor.” Being a native of the country, he was accustomed to the phenomenon, and thought little of it.
These tremblings and rockings of the earth, that seem so terrible to us Europeans, are such ordinary occurrences in the environs of San Salvador that the district has acquired the name of the “swinging mat;” but these shocks, though frequent, had never been hitherto of the violent and destructive character which they have assumed at Valparaiso and Lima, where about once in a century the destruction of a town is reckoned on as a matter of course.
The volcano of Isalco, too, being in constant activity, and only forty-eight miles south of the city of San Salvador, had always been regarded as a chimney and safety-valve, affording a free vent for the steam and other dangerous products of the subterranean furnace.
The shocks were repeated at tolerably regular intervals, two or three in an hour, during the whole of the Good Friday, and all had the same direction,—namely, from west-southwest to east-northeast; at which point, a league from the town, lies the great crater of Cuscatlan, about five hundred feet above San Salvador.
The ceremonies of the Good Friday proceeded with the accustomed pomp, and people did not think of disturbing their processions, or their visits to the cathedral, on account of the earthquake; though occasionally, when there came a shock rather stronger than usual, some of the devout crowd did turn pale and make a rush towards the doors.
At half-past nine in the evening there came a shock so violent that the houses were shaken to the foundations, the roofs cracked, plaster and tiles fell, and the walls in many places were rent. The houses are all low and broad, without upper stories, the walls mostly of clay, which is very elastic, and the rafters made of pliable, closely-plaited cane, admirably adapted to resist the most violent shocks; otherwise the houses would have fallen in a mass with this one, which lasted eight seconds, the ground undulating like the ocean. Every one rushed out into the open air, but a full hour passed without any further movement. We determined, nevertheless, not to sleep under a roof; but my countryman, Mr. Kronmeier, the Prussian vice-consul, who came home about eleven o’clock, laughed at our caution, and went to bed as usual in his bedroom. He was used to these unpleasant occurrences; though he confessed that, during a residence of sixteen years in Central America and Mexico, he had never felt in one day so many shocks as during the one just past.
The old volcano of Cuscatlan, from which the shocks appeared to proceed, lies, as I have said, about three miles from the city; viewed from this direction, it forms a beautiful cone, with a gently rounded summit, and its sides are clothed from top to bottom with wood; its crater is still quite perfect, a mile and a half in diameter, and filled with water at the bottom.... There exists no certain record of the former activity of this volcano; but according to tradition an eruption of lava from a cleft in its side took place in 1650, and overwhelmed the village of Neliopa; but according to others it was merely an eruption of mud and not of fire....