THE CITY OF EARTHQUAKES.

Waikato Times, Volume XXI, Issue 1729, 4 August 1883, Page 6

THE CITY OF EARTHQUAKES.

Caracas has got used to earthquakes, as Mexico to revolutions. Their frequency has developed a special nomenclature. Temmoto, the literal translation of our comprehensive term, would here be as insufficient as the word hurricane for the description of all kinds of atmospheric disturbances ; teviblor, vibracion, tremor, golpd, rasgo, rasgada, terrcvwto, express only a part of the wide scale between a faint vibration and a well-breaking shook. Of temblors the' city has at the very least a semi- weekly supply ; golpes (involving broken windows and fractured brick walls) occur about twice a year — in some years every month. Last year Caracas weathered fourteen or fifteen of them. During the disastrous first week in September I had a remarkable proof how familiar long experience has made the populace with the attendant and prospective phenomena of the various kinds of earthquakes, and also how impossible it is to predict the day of their advent. As a general rule, a turbulent spring is followed by a quiet summer,; and when, I deposited my surveying instruments in the Posada de San Gabriel, the landlord congratulated me on the - proßpeot of a ticvipo mas pacifico, a period ef more than usual peace. There had Been two severe shocks in the preceding month, and no 'end of temblors, and the probabilities were that the, rest of the year would make amends. The atmospheric indications were, also more favorable; ,the ominons mist of the , coast range had cleared, away, and for, a week or so we could <hope to sleep in peace. That was on the sth of Septemper. The following day, was even brighter, ,^ light haze, veiled:thehorizon of the' Orinoco Valley, where jfche rainy season still resisted the influence o£ the tradewinds, but not a cloud approaiohed the coast

plalnf^Tho air was both dear and cool. Bu in the afternoon, about an hour before sanael I heard^iipund of harried 'footsteps on th front itairs pf ihe hotel, and the gfi&ts on th verandah put ffieir heads together/** * T Vf ."fatiaiE is'it?" I inqairedj' 'MThe stag* from Guarenas ? " • :4 §. : " No"; I wish it was." said the landlord " The driver could tell us about' it,T supple They say there has been another temblor 01 the river, all the way from Guarenas t< Pao." " Yes, and clear'aorogsjto the coast,"" addei one of the new-comers. " The Artegas ii Santa [the northern suburb of Caracas] an quite sure that they felt it in their own garden It jarred the glass in their garden house." 11 Well," said the landlord, "if it is not i local ahake, we need not oare. The uplan ders have not had their fair share, anyhpw.' The stage wag late that evening, Betvreer Santa Rita and the hotel, the driver had beei stopped at nearly every street-corner, and hi' arrival filled the house with newsmongers There had been two very poroeptible jars a Guarenas, and half an hour after .ho -had lef the village he had heard a many -voiced shout very likely a signal of something worse than i temblor. Guarenas is the alarm-station o the Arauco track. Its valley seems to be thi very centre of the Caracas earthquake region and an alarm cry, or sometimes the boom o an old howitzer, is a well-understood danger 3ignal for the neighboring villages. " Tes, that settles it," said the landlord "It's a golpe de' fuera (a shock from th outer regions, a non-local disturbance), and i may reach all the way to Cumana." „ The local earthquakes seem to have thei: centre in the mountain^ ?of Caracas, and sel dom reach* the coast, while the pandemii shocks are supposed to originate in the Andei of New Granada, and often shake the contin ent from the Isthmus to the mouth of th Orinoco. "At what time to-morrow." I inquired " do you think we shall have another shake ? ' "It will be sooner than to-morrow, if i comes at all," said the posadcro; " but i will not ruin us, or we should have had i flhare of it before this." The night was clouded, but certainly no sultry, at nine o'clock the streets were stil full of promenaders. Two hours later I wai awakened by the rattling of a passing carri age, mingled with the hum of so many voicei on.the verandah, that I was not quite sure if thi sudden vibration of a window-shutter can* from below or from*f rom* the window of my bed room. The next moment all was absolutely still. Was it the expectant silence of a whoL oity listening for a repetition of the tremor [ do not know ifjthaJieavier earthquake shocki are preceded by any sensible, though inau dible, symptoms ; but I remember that ii walking toward the window I clutched thi bed-post just before the house was shaken ty a violent concussion, directly followed b] several short, sharp jolts, such as the occu pants of a heavy coach might feol if the_ freal of a runaway horse should jerk the vehicle t< the top of the]narrow platform, and then rat' tie it down a flight of steps on the other side " Never mind the bottles, Frank." I heard th< landlord call out to one of his waiters. " Jus move the cupboard back, and shut the win dows. Say, run back and tell Pablo (hii youngest son) to hurry up." " No, it is noi over yet," he replied to a sotto voct remark o the professor. The people of Caracas seemec to share that opinion. There was a light ir nearly every window, and the square wai nearly full of refugeos, while a number o: wrtnos, or night-watchmen, ran from house to house, and knocked hurriedly at every un opened door. The capital of Venezuela signalizes its loyalty by the consumption of native wines, and the sleep ofjsome extra patriO' tic burgher might be earthquake proof. " Yes, that was a golpe traversal" remarked the landlord, "transverse shook, that did not come from our mountains, but merely crossed them on->its way to the coast. If ii •joes in its old track, I am afraid the people oi Rio Chico will have to build their cabins over again, this third time since last Februury." The sky had cleared up, and a late moon brightened the house-tops with its peaceful light : but now and then the windows rattled ominously, and the watchmen were still hammering away from door to door, when nature found a way to second their efforts in a very eflectual manner. A shock like the thump of an explosion shook the town, and on the lower steps of the verandah (resting on nearly level ground) I felt a push, as if the flag-stones under my feet had been |dislodged by a sideward, blow. All along the street pieces of broken glass and stucco rattled down on the pavement ; the assembly on the plaza swelled suddenly to a vociferous crowd ; the great bell of the Alta Gracia rang out a booming alarm peal ; and a minute after a six-horse carriage came tearing down the street with the impetus of a fireman's team — the patrol wagon, going to the penitentiary to remove and guard the prisoners. The bells paused for a moment, and " Dios, Dios, ten piedad 1 " (Have mercy, Lord 1) resounded through the streets as plainly as words spoken in a closed room ; for I believe that the prayer was uttered by half the populous town. There was no kneeling in the streets, and no ceremonies ; the cry came from their hearts, and though nobody shouted the thirty thousand voices swelled the chorus, above all the din and tumult of the distracted city. For the next ten minutes the clatter of the falling debris continued, as if the buildings were still vibrating from the after-effects of the first concussion; for the occasional underground rumblings felt rather like the recoil of a distant shock. But presently the multitude crowded toward the uptown quarters, There was a panic in one of the river suburbs, and even through the tramp of the general flight we could hear the distant echo of an outcry that meant something more than the yells of an idle mob. The'»warehouse of the associated foreign merchants had fallen, and the custom-house building was dislocado — disjointed and top-heavy, and going to collapse, Rumor added that the Plaza de la Torre was a mass of ruins ; the mischief was spreading ; the propheoy of Doctor Ortiz — a local Vennor — was coming to pass. " All possible," said the landlord ; but we are safe. It's spreading northward ; it has passed us, and the golpes de fuera never turn back." Hs said this in a tone of oalm conviction, and, indeed, soon dfter loftked his. office door, and sent his children to bed. The next morning the crowd around the telegraph office almost blocked the street. Caracas has no Associated Press, and s the telegraph companies issue efficial bulletins at five or ten cents each, according to the size and import. This morning their middle-men charged a real, (about twelve and a half cents), and twice as much to buyers who would not wait, for the demand exceeded the supply. The earthquake had shaken the whole north coast of South America, besides five of the seven Isthmus States, with the main axis of its progress along the track of 1826. The shock at twenty minutes after two o'clock a. m. had traveled three thousand miles in less than haft an hour. Guayaquil, Ventura, Maracaibo, Caracas, Aspinwall, and San Juan de Nicaragua had been visited by a coast wave, that tore ships from their mooring, and burried hundreds of shore-dwellers under the ruins of their houses. In Venezuela the Arauco track had deflected the main wave, and the coast towns had suffered comparatively little, with the exception of Bio Ohico, (the very place my host' had mentioned when he recognized the shock as a golpe traversal), where half the buildings, mostly adobe cabins, had been prostrated by the first concussion. In Caracas itself the total loss amounted to eight .persons killed, twenty-six wounded, sixty-two buildings totally destroyed, and sixty-seven " disjointed" or badly craoked. The serious damage was confined almost wholly to the river suburb. The up-towns quarters had escaped with broken stuccoes, and the famous Celle de San Martin was again entirely unharmed;' 'In 18|2 fourteen , thousand persons were killed By the jfall of their: dwellings. v ' ,';','' Caracas, 1 founded in 1567, has been , visited .by eighteen terremotos, or earthquakes of the fir£t magnitude. Golpe», rumblings, : and tremors are never counted, butinust ampuhfr to an average of sixty appreciable 'Shooks pe* year | involving an average yearly damage of

three hundred thojisan^^UariYor the equivalent of a per capita tax of four, dollars. This impost.has takecUhe mgenuifcy'of the inhabitfttijs, jandjau'ghtrthem som^-tisefalVlessons. Projecting basement earners (giymg the house itsUgfitly pyramidal appearance) hare been fojnd ; ;'saf6i? than' absolutely perpendioular .yralls oorner-stpnes and roof -beams have sated many lives wnen^tne central walls have split from top to bottom; vaults and keystone arohes, n« matter how massive, are more perilous than common itooden lin,tels, and there are many isolated buildings in the oity. In many streets broad iron girdtors, riveted to the wall, about a foot above the housedoor, run from house to house along the front' of an entire square. Turret-like brick chim--neys, with iron top-ornaments, would expose the architect to the vengeance of an excited mob ; the roofs are flat, or flat terraced ; the ohimney-flues terminate near the eaves in a perforated lid. Every house has its lado teguro, or safety side, where the inhabitants Oplace their fragile property; and there is a supposed and not altogether imaginary conneotion between north sides and seonrity, The [transcontinental, shocks move from west to east, the looal ones from east to west, and sometimes from northeast to northwest; so that in two out of three cases the west and east walls have been stricken broadside, while no shook has ever approaohed the town from the north — that is, from the direction of the sea. A native of Venezuela would laugh at the idea that a terremoto is an upheaval of the ground. The movement of dislodged rocks, the disj ointment of house walls and their way of falling, the motions of a tidal wave during- the progress of an earthquake, all prove that the shock is a lateral push, and that its operation could be imitated on a small scale by covering a table with loose" pebbles, card-houses, etc., and striking the edge of the board. Bedsteads, experts say, should not be placed to near a window ; for if the wall gives way it is is apt to split along the weakest line of the masonry. For the same reason it is unlucky to stand in an open door. The safest place, during the progress of an earthquake, is the north side, or the bentre of a room, or else the middle of the open street. I notioed that the owner of a lucky house is apt to overrate its stability ; for even in the perilous districts the markets are often crowded with buyers and sellers, while an adjoining street resounds with the crash of falling bricks. Low water, not precoded by an unusual drought, is a suspicious sign ; and if the Gura Bpring fails at the same time, true believers go to bed with their boots on, although skeptics assert that both phenomena are apt to prophepy after the event. A mist in the afternoon is regarded as a harbinger of mischief, and in order to distinguish it fron a common dust-haze the natives watch the wooded heights of Ban Sebastian ; for during the dry season the paramos — the treeless table-lands north of the city — are in a chronic state of haziness. . Tender-footed cats may feel a vibration before it booomes distinct enough to affect a bell-frame, but most animals are as indifferent to such portents as to their fulfillment. A moderately well-rooted forest tree can stand an earthquake better than any building, and to the inhabitants of the prairies the most violent trembling of the ground can cause nothing but a' trifling inoonvenience, & momentary difficulty 10 preserve their equilibrium. On the pastures of Venezuela cattle graze peacefully the year round, exoept in the mountains, where the noise of falling rocks sometimes stampedes a whole herd. Still, there is a tradition that, a few hours before the catastrophe of 1812, a Spanish stallion broke out of its river suburbs, and took refuge in the eastern highlands. Caracas is moving eastward ; the upper (northeastern) suburbs grow from year to year, while the streets below the mint exhibit manifold signs of negleot. The agricultural population ef the surrounding country has steadily increased, for crops are not materially the worse for a periodical instability of the ground, except perhaps in the orange district of Valencia, and at the mouth of the coast rivers, where tidal waves have often literally submerged the littoral plantations. Intelligent observers therefore, predict that, in spite of local and imported earthquakes, the population of Northern Venezuela will continue to increase, but that the present site of Caracas will ultimately be abandoned. — The Atlantic Monthly.