Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, December 1878

by Various

The city of Cua was beyond comparison the richest and most flourishing of all, being situated at the head of the valley, where it opens toward the vast Llanos or plains, and being also the emporium of many extensive districts producing the staples of the country, such as coffee, cocoa, sugar and indigo. There too had been transported enormous timber from the still virgin forests—timber of the most valuable kind, whether for ornament, for building or for dyeing purposes. Nor was the city more remarkable for its advantageous situation and the importance of its commerce than for the refinement of its society. Unlike the generality of inland towns in South America, where the constitution of society is apt to be rather heterogeneous, Cua was the residence of many of the principal families of the country—gentlemen at the head of wealthy commercial establishments, or opulent planters owning large estates in the neighborhood, but making the city their permanent abode. Hence the society was far beyond what might have been imagined as regards position and general cultivation. Cua, like all Spanish American towns, was laid out at right angles, while many of the houses rivalled the handsomest in Caracas, and were furnished with equal splendor.

Such was the state of things in this smiling valley when, at the same moment precisely at which we in Caracas felt the shock of the earthquake, all the above-mentioned towns—Ocumare, Santa Lucia, Charallave, etc.—were shaken to their foundations. The latter especially suffered greatly, for not a house was left uninjured or safe to inhabit, although the occupants had time to escape. But Cua—unhappy Cua!—was utterly destroyed. Without a moment's warning, without a single indication of their impending fate, all the inhabitants were buried beneath the mass of ruins to which in a few seconds it was reduced. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say there had been no sign. The heat had become so intense between seven and eight o'clock that numbers of persons were seated outside of the houses or had betaken themselves to the open squares to endeavor to seize a breath of fresh air, while many of the lower classes were sleeping under the open sky; to which fact, indeed, they owed their lives. The only habitations which survived the violence of the shock were the huts of the poor, being what is called bajareque, made of posts driven into the earth and otherwise formed of a species of wild cane tied together and cemented with mud and straw, these primitive dwellings being usually considered earthquake-proof.

Besides the extraordinary heat, a friend of ours, who was riding from his plantation into the town, observed another indication of some disturbance in the usual processes of Nature. While crossing the river he noticed that the fishes were leaping in great numbers out of the water, and called the attention of several persons to the fact. They attributed this, however, to the discomfort occasioned by the intense heat, for the temperature of the water had increased so much that it had become disagreeable to drink.

The gentleman to whom I have alluded, Don Tomas de la G——, describes the subterranean noise at Cua during the earthquake as something terrific, like the discharge of hundreds of cannon, while the earth rose simultaneously under his feet. There are two kinds of earthquakes—that of trepidacion, which comes directly from below, with an upward motion; the other, de oscilacion, where the earth sways to and fro like a pendulum, and which is generally less dangerous. Unfortunate Cua experienced both: the first shock was one vast upheaval, the whole town being uprooted from its foundations and every house uplifted and overturned, and before the bewildered population could realize what was happening they were buried beneath the ruins. The shock then changed into the oscillatory movement, and set all this mass of destruction to quivering as if it were the dire agony of some living creature. All was so sudden that few were saved by their own exertions, those who survived having either been dug out of the ruins afterward or cast forth by the counter-motion as the earth rocked to and fro in the second shock. It was as if the city had been lifted up en masse, and then thrown back with the foundations uppermost—upside down, in fact. Don Tomas de la G—— happened to be in the plaza in front of the church when the shock came: in the endeavor to steady himself he grasped a tree close by; the tree was uprooted, throwing him violently forward; then suddenly reversing its course in an exactly opposite direction, it flung him off to a great distance, bruising him severely. While clinging to the tree he beheld the church in front of him, a new and handsome edifice, literally lifted up bodily into the air and then overturned with an appalling crash, "not one stone left upon another." If this had occurred an hour or two previously, hundreds would have perished within the walls, for there had been religious services in the church until a late hour, it being the Friday before Holy Week, termed by Spanish Catholics Viernes del Concilio.

Don Tomas de la G—— described the whole scene as something too terrible for the imagination to conceive. After the stupendous crash caused by the falling of the houses, for a few moments there ensued an awful silence: then, amid the impenetrable darkness caused by the cloud of dust from the fallen walls, which totally obscured the murky light of a clouded moon, there arose a cry of anguish from those without—a wail as of one great voice of stricken humanity; then the answering smothered groan of those buried beneath the ruins—a cry like nothing human, rising as it did from the very bowels of the earth.

There ensued a scene the harrowing details of which can never be fully given—the search of the living and uninjured for those dead, dying or imprisoned ones who lay beneath the great masses of stone and mortar. Sometimes, in answer to the desperate cries of those outside or already rescued, smothered, almost inaudible cries for help might be heard, so faint as to seem scarcely human, and yet growing fainter and fainter still, until those who were working for the release of the captive became aware that their labor was in vain, and that only a corpse lay beneath their feet. No light could be obtained in this stifling Erebus of dust and darkness: all means of obtaining light had been buried in the undistinguishable mass, and where lighted lamps were overturned in the crash they had set fire to beams and rafters in the houses, and many who escaped being crushed were burned to death. Even proper instruments were wanting, and the number of persons who had collected to assist in the work of searching the débris was totally inadequate to the occasion. Many instances of distress I can vouch for as authentic, as the victims were intimate friends of my own, and all the individuals I am about to mention were persons of the highest respectability, the upper classes having suffered more than the lower, who, living in huts such as I have described, were generally uninjured.

One of the richest commercial houses in Cua was owned by three German gentlemen, brothers. The eldest, having married a Spanish American lady of the place, had lately built himself a magnificent mansion, and one of his brothers resided with him. The lady was seated between her brother-in-law and husband when the shock came: a huge beam from the ceiling fell across her brother-in-law and literally divided him in two, while the side wall, falling at the same time, buried her husband from her sight. She herself was saved by the great packages of hemp and tobacco which fell around her and prevented the wall from crushing her. Blinded by the darkness and choked by the dust, she yet managed with the only hand at liberty to tear an opening which allowed her to breathe, and through which she called for help. Faint accents answered her: they were the tones of her husband's failing voice. She called to him to have courage—that she had hopes of release. "No," he replied, "I am dying, but do not give way. Live for our child's sake." As well as her agitation and distress would permit she endeavored to sustain him with words of encouragement, but in vain. About fifteen minutes passed in this sad colloquy: the replies came more and more slowly, more and more painfully, and then they ceased: the imprisoned lady comprehended in her lonely agony that she was a widow. She, a living, breathing woman, fully conscious of her awful anguish, lay helpless between the stiff and stark corpses of her husband and brother-in-law, and quite ignorant of the fate of her infant child, which had been left in another part of the house. Her cries were heard at last by a muleteer, who made some efforts to release her, but alone and in the darkness he could accomplish little. He went in search of aid, but his companions, after he had returned to the house, refused to endanger their lives, as the shocks were incessant and a high wall still standing threatened to topple over upon them at any moment. They even endeavored to dissuade the muleteer from any further effort, but the good creature replied that he was indebted to the imprisoned lady for many kindnesses, and that he was willing to risk his life in her behalf. One or two remained with him, and they succeeded at last in releasing her, but were obliged to cut her clothes from her body, as they seemed immovably nailed to the floor, the Good Samaritan of a muleteer covering her with his own cloak. The bodies of her husband, brother-in-law, two clerks and several servants were recovered the next day and buried.

Another lady was found, when the ruins of her house were cleared away, upon her knees, with her children surrounding her in the same attitude—all dead! Their bodies were uninjured, so that it is probable that they were suffocated by the dust of the falling walls. A gentleman named Benitez, who had been standing at the door of his house, ran into the centre of the street and fell upon his knees: a little boy from the opposite doorway rushed in his terror into Benitez's arms. At that moment the two houses fell, and in this attitude the bodies of the man and the child were found the following day. A bride of twenty-four hours was killed with three of her children by a previous marriage. A fourth child was supposed also to have been killed, but on the third day a soldier who was passing the house pierced a basket which was among the ruins with his bayonet out of curiosity, when to his amazement a childish voice cried out, "Tengo hambre" ("I am hungry"), and the basket being lifted a living child was discovered, thus almost miraculously saved.

One lady was crushed to death under the weight of the body of her daughter, who could not move a limb, although she knew her mother was dying beneath her. A beam had fallen transversely across the daughter, and in this position she crouched, listening in agony to the death-struggles of her parent. More, almost, than the bitterness of death itself must have been the horror of such a situation and the terrible contact during long hours of silent darkness with a cold, rigid corpse. This lady belonged to the family of Fonseca-Acosta, one of the most distinguished in Cua, its head being the eminent physician Dr. Acosta, now of Paris, one of the favored circle of the ex-queen Isabella of Spain, with his wife, who was Miss Carroll, a sister of the present governor of Maryland.

The Acosta family suffered perhaps more than any other, no less than fourteen of its members having perished, among them Doña Rosa, a still young and remarkably handsome woman, with her son, a lad of fifteen, and her baby grandchild. It was to save the life of this grandchild that Doña Rosa forfeited her own, as she ran into the house to snatch it from its cradle. Of the same family two little boys had fallen asleep at their play: one lay upon a sofa, and the other had crept beneath it. The earthquake literally turned the room upside down, the sofa being overturned by the falling wall, the child beneath thrown out and killed by the descending rafters, while the boy who had been sleeping upon it fell beneath the lounge, and, being thus protected, actually remained in this position uninjured for the greater part of two days. He had been numbered with the many dead in that house of sorrow, and was only found when the mourning survivors were searching for his remains to inter them—alive, but insensible, and entirely unable to give any account of what had befallen him.