ucceeded in
getting it open, and made my way to the court-yard, where I found the
rest of the inhabitants of the house praying and screaming.

After a few moments had elapsed, however, they had quite got over their
fright, and were laughing and joking at their previous consternation and
precipitate flight. Unless the houses actually fall, people do not,
after the first moment, think much of these shocks, but this time they
did take the precaution to put all their doors open, and had their beds
carried out into the court. Mine was placed under the gallery of the
corridor, and a great deal of compassion was expressed for me when they
found I had been a little hurt. A young doctor, who occupied the room
next to mine, thought there would be no strong "temblor" again to-night,
but an aged priest said that this house was old and decayed, and it was
very necessary to be careful. My housemates then went back into their
rooms, and, though they kept the doors open, consumed with a good
appetite the remainder of the Easter feast, the conversation the while
turning, of course, almost exclusively on the "temblor."

I lay gazing up into the night sky, not at all inclined to sleep. The
day had been, as usual, very warm, the thermometer at noon showing 88 deg.
Fahrenheit; a heavy mass of clouds (strato-cumulus) lay piled up about
the waning moon, but dispersed towards ten o'clock, and the moon then
shone brightly through a clear and tranquil atmosphere. A few light
scattered clouds of the cirrus and cirro-stratus lay motionless at a few
points on the horizon, but there was nothing to portend any unusual
phenomenon.

At thirty minutes past ten, however, came the shock that laid the city
of San Salvador in ruins. It began with a terrific noise, the earth
heaving as if lifted by a subterranean sea; and this movement, and the
thunder accompanying it, continued for ten or twelve seconds, while the
crash and uproar of falling buildings were still more deafening than the
thunder. An immense and blinding cloud of dust arose, through which were
heard the shrieks and supplications of the flying people, calling on
"Maria Santissima" and all other saints; and at length a hymn, in
thousand-voiced chorus, which was heard plainly, through all the other
noises, at a distance of a mile and a half from the town, by a family of
German emigrants with whom I was acquainted.

I had witnessed many terrible scenes of war and revolution in the Old
World, b