The City of Earthquakes

THE observations of the International Weather Bureau have established the curious fact that storms move in beaten tracks, and that, from their starting-point and general direction, it can be pretty accurately predicted where they will spend their maximum force. But it seems yet stranger that the mysterious underground storms called earthquakes should follow a similar routine, and repeat their dreaded visits with more than the regularity of certain epidemics. In many parts of South America, the natives need no signal bureau to foretell (from the data of the first symptoms) the duration, as well as the direction and the average destructiveness, of an earthquake ; and during a five years’ residence in Northern Venezuela I had various opportunities to ascertain the accuracy of these predictions.

There are several seismic highways, with pretty well defined boundaries. On the whole, the western coast plain is more liable to disturbances than the plateau of the Andes. Some of the lateral branches of the main chain enjoy a perfect immunity, while others are rarely out of trouble, like the Cordillera Geral, in Western Brazil, and the coast range of Venezuela. But the most shaky localities are the intersection points of two different earthquake tracks, as the valley of Rio Bamba, in Ecuador, and the coast plain of Caracas. The latter region, comprising the valley of the Rio Arauco, the hills of San Sebastian, and the immediate neighborhood of the capital (Caracas), is perhaps, in all South America, the most favorable locality for the study of seismic phenomena. The Arauco has changed its course three or four times in the course of this century. It is a very Acheron, a central stream of the Plutonic region, and so begirt with sulphur caves, hot springs, and mud geysers that the citizens of Caracas have to get their drinking-water from the Catucho, six miles further southwest.

Caracas has got used to earthquakes, as Mexico to revolutions. Their frequency has developed a special nomenclature. Terremoto, 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; temblor, vibracion, tremor, golpe, rasgo, rasgada, terremoto, express only a part of the wide scale between a faint vibration and a wall-breaking shock. 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. This year Caracas weathered fourteen or fifteen of them. During the disastrous first week of 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 prospect of a tiempo mas pacifco, a period of 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 ominous 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 5th of September. The following day was even brighter. A light haze veiled the horizon of the Orinoco Valley, where the rainy season still resisted the influence of the tradewinds, but not a cloud approached the coast plain. The air was both clear and cool. But in the afternoon, about an hour before sunset, I heard a sound of hurried footsteps on the front stairs of the hotel, and the guests on the veranda put their heads together.

“ What is it ? ” I inquired. “ The stage from Guarenas ? ”

“ No; I wish it was,” said the landlord. " The driver could tell us about it, I suppose. They say there has been another temblor on the river, all the way from Guarenas to Pao.”

“ Yes, and clear across to the coast,” added one of the new-comers. “ The Artegas in Santa Rita [the northern suburb of Caracas] are quite sure that they felt it in their own garden. It jarred the glass in their garden house.”

“Well,” said the landlord, “if it is not a local shake, we need not care. The uplanders have not had their fair share, anyhow.”

The stage was late, that evening. Between Santa Rita and the hotel, the driver had been stopped at nearly every street corner, and his arrival filled the house with newsmongers. There had been two very perceptible jars at Guarenas, and half an hour after he had left the village he had heard a many-voiced shout, very likely a signal of something worse than a temblor. Guarenas is the alarm station of the Arauco track. Its valley seems to be the very centre of the Caracas earthquake region, and an alarm cry, or sometimes the boom of an old howitzer, is a well-understood danger-signal for the neighboring villages.

“ Yes, that settles it,” said the landlord. “ It’s a golpe de fuera [a shock from the outer regions, a non-local disturbance], and it may reach all the way to Cumana.”

The local earthquakes seem to have their centre in the mountains of Caracas, and seldom reach the coast, while the pandemic shocks are supposed to originate in the Andes of New Granada, and often shake the continent from the Isthmus to the mouth of the Orinoco.

“At what time to-morrow” I inquired, “ do you think we shall have another shake ? ”

“ It will be sooner than to-morrow, if it comes at all,” said the posadero; “ but it will not ruin us, or we should have had a share of it before this.”

The night was clouded, but certainly not sultry, and at nine o’clock the streets were still full of promenaders. Two hours later I was awakened by the rattling of a passing carriage, mingled with the hum of so many voices on the veranda that I was not quite sure if the sudden vibration of a window-shutter came from below or from the window of my bedroom. The next moment all was absolutely still. Was it the expectant silence of a whole city listening for a repetition of the tremor ? I do not know if the heavier earthquake shocks are preceded by any sensible, though inaudible, symptoms ; but I remember that in walking towards the window I clutched the bedpost just a second before the house was shaken by a violent concussion, directly followed by several short, sharp jolts, such as the occupants of a heavy coach might feel if the freak of a runaway horse should jerk the vehicle to the top of a narrow platform, and then rattle it down a flight of steps on the other side.

There was a general rush down-stairs, and my first impulse was to gain the open street without a moment’s loss of time; but the mere sound of a calm human voice has a marvelously reassuring effect.

“ Never mind the bottles, Frank,” I heard the landlord call out to one of his waiters. “Just move the cupboard back, and shut the windows.”

I closed my own window, and walked down-stairs. There was nobody in the office, but in the dining-room several waiters were running to and fro, removing the plates and glasses. The hall was empty; nearly all the up-stairs boarders were foreigners, and most of them had actually rushed out in their stocking-feet. But on the veranda I found several late guests, besides the landlord and Professor S—, of the Geological Survey, who had accompanied me on my return trip from Cumana.

“ No hay cuidado, — no danger, no danger,” repeated the landlord. “ This house was built for that very kind of accident, and the roof-girders are mortised all around.”

But that might be a routine speech ; for in talking to somebody in the hall I heard him add, in a whisper, “ Say, run back and tell Pablo [his youngest son] to hurry up.” “ No, it is not over yet,” he replied to a sotto-voce remark of the professor’s. The people of Caracas seemed to share that opinion. There was a light in nearly every window, and the square was full of refugees, while a number of serenos, or night-watchmen, ran from house to house, and knocked hurriedly at every unopened door. The capital of Venezuela signalizes its loyalty by the consumption of native wines, and the sleep of some extra patriotic burgher might be earthquake proof.

“ Yes, that was a golpe traversal,” remarked the landlord, “ a transverse shock, that did not come from our mountains, but merely crossed them on its way to the coast. If it goes in its old track, I am afraid the people of Rio Chico will have to build their cabins over again, this third time since last February.”

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 effectual manner. A shock like the thump of an explosion shook the town, and on the lower steps of the veranda (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 firemen’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 ! ” (Have mercy, Lord !) resounded through the streets as plainly as words spoken in a closed room; for I believe that the prayer was uttered by half the inhabitants of 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 dim and tumult of the distracted city. For the next ten minutes the clatter of falling débris 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 towards the up-town 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 prophecy of Dr. 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.”

He said this in a tone of calm conviction, and, indeed, soon after locked his office door, and sent his children to bed. Several of the city guests went home, and after waiting another quarter of an hour, during which the rumbling of the subterranean forces seemed to recede, like the muttering of a retreating storm, I lighted a candle, and returned to my bedroom.

The next morning the crowd around the telegraph office almost blocked the street. Caracas has no Associated Press, and the telegraph companies issue official bulletins at five or ten cents each, according to size and import. This morning their middle-men charged a reäl (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 2.20 A. M. had traveled three thousand miles in less than half an hour. Guayaquil, Ventura, Maracaibo, Caracas, Aspinwall, and San Juan de Nicaragua had been visited by a coast wave, that tore ships from their moorings, and buried hundreds of shoredwellers 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 Rio Chico (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 sixtyseven “ disjointed ” or badly cracked. The serious damage was confined almost wholly to the river suburb. The uptown quarters had escaped with broken stuccoes, and the famous Calle de San Martin was again entirely unharmed.

In 1812, when fourteen thousand persons were killed by the fall of their dwellings, the San Martin district got off with four shattered brick houses, and in 1826 with a few broken windows. The current explanations of this immunity vary from the most fanciful conceits (as the prophylactic influence of a votive tablet at a certain corner of the favored street) to Professor McKinney’s theory, that the formation of the subjacent rocks isolates that part of the table land from the surrounding strata. Several smaller streets, and even single buildings, irrespective of their architectural distinctions, pass for earthquake proof, and experience has generally justified that confidence. The north side of the Plaza del Presidio has never sustained any serious damage, while the west and east sides of the same square are as liable to accidents as the worst parts of the river suburb. The puntas tremolosas, the shaky districts, are likewise well known, but, in consequence of the lower rents, not less well inhabited; some of them being, indeed, in the very centre of the business part of the town, — like the “factory quarter” and the river-side taverns. The old cathedral, too, seems to have been founded on an extremely tremulous basis, and in its present condition is perhaps the strangest-looking minster in Christendom. The earthquake of 1812 had cracked its west wall so badly that the dome threatened to collapse, and as a provisory measure the building was propped up with massive, but rather unsymmetrical, buttresses. Soon after, the top of the dome did fall, and was imperfectly repaired, while the buttresses not only remained, but now support the least grotesque-looking part of the structure ; for on the east side and above the facade large breaches in the masonry have been patched up with brickwork, at the expense of a pious tiler, who, during the catastrophe of 1826, had made a vow to repair the sacred edifice with his own hands.

The foreign residents of Caracas generally prefer the southern (up-town) quarters, whereas the natives take the cheaper lodgings and the additional risk. But the experience of the last fourteen generations has somewhat diminished that risk. Caracas was founded in 1567, and has been visited by eighteen terremotos, or earthquakes of the first magnitude. Golpes, rumblings, and tremors are never counted, but must amount to an average of sixty appreciable shocks per year; involving an average yearly damage of three hundred thousand dollars, or the equivalent of a per capita tax of four dollars. This impost has taxed the ingenuity of the inhabitants, and taught them some useful lessons. Projecting basement corners (giving the house a slightly pyramidal appearance) have been found safer than absolutely perpendicular walls; mortised cornerstones and roof-beams have saved many lives, when the central walls have split from top to bottom ; vaults and keystone arches, no matter how massive, are more perilous than common wooden lintels, and there are not many isolated buildings in the city. In many streets broad iron girders, riveted to the wall, about a foot above the house door, run from house to house along the front of an entire square. Turret-like brick chimneys, with iron top ornaments, would expose the architect to the vengeance of an excited mob ; the roofs are flat, or flat terraced; the chimney flues terminate near the eaves in a perforated lid.

Every house has its lado seguro, or safety side, where the inhabitants place their fragile property ; and there is a supposed and not altogether imaginary connection between north sides and security. The transcontinental shocks move from west to east, the local 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 shock has ever approached 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 movements of dislodged rocks, the disjointment 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.

For some less obvious reason, walled cellars are supposed to be unsafe, or “ unlucky,” as the Spaniards express it. Subterranean storehouses, they hold, ought to have board partitions, or should not be immediately under the house. Bedsteads, experts say, should not be placed too near a window ; for if the wall gives way it 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 centre of a room, or else the middle of the open street. The slightest sensible vibration is more ominous than the audible collapse of an adjoining house; for the safety districts are bounded by sharpdrawn lines, and often comprise only a portion of a square, and even of a single building, as in the case of the Mint and Assaying Office, whose eastern wing has never been damaged. On the whole, I noticed 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. In some cases, however, this apparent recklessness can be ascribed to a certain constitutional stoicism of the Spanish race. On the day before I left Caracas, I saw one of the victims of the river suburb, a Catalan guitar virtuoso, who had lost his younger brother, a trobadero, or ballad singer, and, with the exception of a still younger sister, his only relative on this side of the ocean. He was playing in a public garden, and strummed away, with half-closed eyes, but in perfect tune and time, though the sobbing little girl at his feet sometimes obliged him to avert his face. It was no “ tragedy combination,” for I was assured that the circumstances of the accident were well known, and that the poor fellow played against his will, and only in preference to paying the forfeit of a broken engagement !

Intermittent dangers stimulate the spirit of augury, and the burghers of Caracas have a whole system of earthquake prognostics ; but it is a significant circumstance that all the more plausible portents refer to the local disturbances. On the day before a heavy shock a hot spring near Plan del Cura, some twenty miles north of the capital, has often suddenly failed. The valley of the Rio Arauco has a Delphic cave, where the rumbling of the subterranean Titans can be heard sooner than elsewhere. Low water, not preceded by an unusual drought, is a suspicious sign; and if the Cura spring fails at the same time, true believers go to bed with their boots on, although skeptics assert that both phenomena are apt to prophesy after the event. A mist in the afternoon is regarded as a harbinger of mischief, and in order to distinguish it from a common dust haze the natives watch the wooded heights of San Sebastian ; for during the dry season the paramos, the treeless table-lands north of the city, are in a chronic state of haziness.

Transcontinental shocks sometimes announce their approach by slight tremors, that can be observed only in special localities. Of the various vibration gauges, the most popular is the cruz sonante, a T-shaped frame, connected with a little bell, and attached to the centre of the ceiling. Foreign scientists have contrived more delicate indicators, which, however, are apt to prove too much, by indicating the approach of every rumbling street car, — as barometrical portents may announce a thunder-shower as well as subterranean thunder; and the natives generally prefer to rely on their bell-frames, or else on the verdict of an approved tembloron, a person endowed with a gift of prescience, varying from the presentiments of a nervous organization to a sort of seismic secondsight.

There are native savants, who base their auguries on systematic observations, but in the river suburb nearly every street has an earthquake Cassandra or two, who would scorn the aid of a signal bureau, and anticipate the course of nature by weeks and months ; and a Pythian huckster on the Plaza de la Torre goes so far as to predict the vicissitudes of special streets, and ascribes her talent to a hereditary gift of clairvoyance, and tradition admits that her mother foretold the very hour of the great earthquake of 1826. There are dogs, cats, and jerboas (a sort of kangaroo shaped rodent) that anticipate the shadow of coming events by methods of their own, and manifest their feelings by a peculiar kind of restlessness. Several intelligent natives of my acquaintance boast the possession of an oracular quadruped of that sort, but the trouble is that auguries by that channel give so very short notice.

Tender-footed cats may feel a vibration before it becomes distinct enough to affect a bell-frame, but most animals are as indifferent to such portents as to their fulfillment. Nature, in fact, has no special reason to warn them ; for to the creatures of the wilderness an earthquake is, after all, a rather unimportant event, as compared with a storm or a frost. 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 inconvenience, a momentary difficulty to preserve their equilibrium. On the pastures of Venezuela cattle graze peacefully the year round, except 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 stable in the river suburb, and took refuge in the eastern highlands.

That horse could have taught the founders of Caracas a valuable lesson. They began by grading the terraces along the banks of the Rio Arauco, and it was a bad mistake to bridge the river at a point where countless caves and crevices proclaim the activity of the subterranean forces. A little further east, or below the junction of the Catucho, the city would have been comparatively safe. Between the Plaza de la Torre and the foot of Santa Marta Street nearly every house has been destroyed and rebuilt five or six times ; and, further west, a large tract of land has been entirely deserted, and is now a military drill-ground. Caracas is moving eastward ; the upper (northeastern) suburbs grow from year to year, while the streets below the mint exhibit manifold signs of neglect. The agricultural population of 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 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.

Horace D. Warner.