of wheat induced a peasant to kill the monster. Politics had, as is usually the case, made more disturbance than the forces of Nature. The Conquistador Alvarado was recently dead, his widow, Doña Beatriz de la Cueva, had claimed the government, and the obsequies of the dead and the ceremonials of the new ruler were agitating the city when the sudden and terrible destruction of both ruler and her capital came. Accounts of the catastrophe vary, as is usual with all history, which some one has wisely called "probabilities and possibilities extracted from lies; but from nine extant descriptions and an examination of the physical marks which three centuries have not wholly effaced, I believe the following to be a fair story of the event:

September is always a rainy month in Guatemala, and on Thursday, the 8th, a storm began which was violent even for that place and season. Rain fell in torrents, and continued to fall all that day and Friday and Saturday. Two hours after dark on the last day a severe earthquake shock was felt, and from Hunapu, since called the Volcan de Agua, came an avalanche of water, carrying with it immense rocks and entire forests. The terror of the earthquake and the roar of the unseen torrent wrought the excitement of the inhabitants to the utmost. Soon the deluge reached the city; the streets were filled to overflowing, and the houses were beaten by the waves and battered by the great trees brought by the torrent. Among the houses most exposed was that of Doña Beatriz, the widow of the Adelantado. She was preparing for bed; but startled by the earthquake and the terrible noise, endeavored to obtain safety in a small chapel near by, and while clinging to the crucifix was killed by the fall

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of the chapel wall. Her house was uninjured. through the city the loss of life was very great; six hundred Spaniards perished, and the loss of Indios and Negroes was far greater. In the morning the remains of the city hardly appeared above the trees, rocks, and mud of the avalanche. It was then that the disheartened survivors decided to remove a league eastward, to the present Antigua.

The earthquake did not destroy the city, still less was there an eruption of water from the volcano; but the crater of the long-extinct cone had been filled with the rains, and the tremor shattered the loose dam of the crater-lip and let the great body of water down the steep side of the mountain. There was water in the crater long before, and the crater to-day shows marks of the broken wall and emptied lake. The destruction of the city was considered a judgment of Heaven upon Doña Beatriz for certain impious remarks made in her bereavement, and it was with difficulty that her family were able to bury her remains in consecrated ground.

On May 23, 1575, San Salvador (Cuscatlan) was destroyed by an earthquake which also greatly damaged Antigua. Afterwards the latter city had an experience that would have discouraged the people of any Northern town, for in 1576 and 1577 it was badly shaken, and on Dec. 23, 1586, destroyed. Then it was rebuilt enough to be again shattered on Feb. 18, 1651, and again on Feb. 12, 1689, and Sept. 29, 1717. The day after this last shock Antigua was destroyed completely; but for all that, on March 4, 1751, the chronicler writes" many ruins," and then the centre of disturbance goes southward for a while. In April, 1765, several towns were destroyed in

San Salvador, and the next month many in the Department of Chiquimula in Guatemala; while during the following October the "earthquake of San Rafael" shook many Guatemaltecan towns to pieces.

On July 29, 1773, Antigua was again destroyed, — if such a thing was possible; and although her inhabitants yielded to the momentary discouragement and permitted the Government to be removed to the Valley of the Hermitage, they have never allowed the ruins to become desolate, and to-day the traveller gazes in astonishment at the shattered walls of nearly eighty churches still the ornament of the town. The Antigua that once sheltered eighty thousand inhabitants, beautiful in its situation and distinguished by its architectural display, is still attractive in its ruins; its forty thousand inhabitants go in and out under the shadow of the volcano and await the next destruction, which may come to-morrow or years hence: the lesson that is past is all forgotten. I confess myself that the ruined churches, so fresh after the sun and rains of a century have penetrated their shattered walls, inspired no apprehension of danger; they were objects of great interest rather than warning; and it was no strange thing that those born in that charming place should cling to it still.

In 1774 nearly all the towns on the Balsam Coast of San Salvador were ruined. I hope my readers understand the delicate gradation in the terms used in speaking of the misfortunes of earthquake countries. A place is "shaken," then "shattered,' then "ruined," and finally "destroyed" by the visit of a temblor; and it is a very nice matter to decide exactly where one term is appropriate and another not.

In February, 1798, San Salvador was badly shaken and after a rather long rest, broken by "no great shakes," two very destructive earthquakes were felt in March and October, 1839. On Sept. 2, 1841, Cartago, in Costa Rica, was destroyed; in June, 1847, the Balsam Coast was greatly ruined; on May 16, 1852, the disturbances occurred northward, in the vicinity of Quezaltenango; on April 16, 1854, San Salvador was destroyed, not, however, for the last time. On Nov. 6, 1857, Cojutepeque was badly shaken, and the same misfortune came upon La Union Aug. 25, 1859. The following December houses were

shattered in Escuintla and Amatitlan; Dec. 19, 1862, Antigua, Amatitlan, Escuintla, Tecpan Guatemala, and the neighboring towns were severely shaken; June 12, 1870, Chiquimulilla was destroyed, and much damage done in Cuajinicuilapa; a month later a severe earthquake was felt in the Departments of Santa Rosa and Jutiapa; March 4, 1873, San Salvador and the neighboring towns were destroyed, -a process they must have become quite accustomed to by this time, and eighteen months later it was the turn of Patzicia to be destroyed, while Chimaltenango, Antigua and the vicinity were only ruined. The year 1878 was marked by the destruction of several towns in Usulutan, San Salvador, and on Dec. 27 and 30, 1879, most of the small towns in the neighborhood of the Lago de Ilopango were overturned.

Hardly a month passes without some slight tremor in western Guatemala. In recent years so much more attention has been paid to seismology, or the observation and record of the time, duration, and direction of earthquake shocks, that the longer lists seem to indicate the increase of slight tremors; but this is not probable, and

certainly the volcanic eruptions have diminished in force and frequency. Fuego, the most important, lays claim to twenty-one of the fifty recorded eruptions of the Central American volcanoes; but during the present century it has cast out merely sand, and no lava streams.

I have never had the experience of a very severe earthquake, although I have had the pictures swing on the walls and the plastering crack and fall; therefore I must borrow the description of an earthquake, that the list just given may seem more real. The following account is considered very truthful:

"The night of the 16th of April, 1854, will ever be one of sad and bitter memory for the people of Salvador. On that unfortunate night our happy and beautiful capital was made a heap of ruins. Movements of the earth were felt on Holy Thursday, preceded by sounds like the rolling of heavy artillery over pavements and like distant thunder. The people were a little alarmed in consequence of this phenomenon, but it did not prevent them from meeting in the churches to celebrate the solemnities of the day. On Saturday all was quiet, and confidence was restored. The people of the neighborhood assembled as usual to celebrate the Passover. The night of Saturday was tranquil, as was also the whole of Sunday. The heat, it is true, was considerable, but the atmosphere was calm. and serene. For the first three hours of the evening nothing unusual occurred; but at half-past nine a severe shock of an earthquake, occurring without the preliminary noises, alarmed the whole city. Many families left their houses and made encampments in the public squares, while others prepared to pass the night in their respective courtyards.