d the violence of the shock
seemed pretty much abated, the first object I perceived in the room
was a woman sitting on the floor with an infant in her arms, all
covered with dust, pale and trembling. I asked her how she got hither,
but her consternation was so great that she could give me no account
of her escape. I suppose that when the tremor first began, she ran out
of her own house, and finding herself in such imminent danger from the
falling stones, retired into the door of mine, which was almost
contiguous to hers, for shelter, and when the shock increased, which
filled the door with dust and rubbish, she ran upstairs into my
apartment. The poor creature asked me, in the utmost agony, if I did
not think the world was at an end; at the same time she complained of
being choked, and begged me to procure her some water. Upon this I
went to a closet where I kept a large jar of water, but found it
broken to pieces. I told her she must not now think of quenching her
thirst, but saving her life, as the house was just falling on our
heads, and if a second shock came, would certainly bury us both.

"I hurried down stairs, the woman with me, holding by my arm, and made
directly to that end of the street which opens to the Tagus. Finding
the passage this way entirely blocked up with the fallen houses to the
height of their second stories, I turned back to the other end which
led to the main street, and there helped the woman over a vast heap of
ruins, with no small hazard to my own life; just as we were going into
this street, as there was one part that I could not well climb over
without the assistance of my hands as well as feet, I desired her to
let go her hold, which she did, remaining two or three feet behind me,
at which instant there fell a vast stone from a tottering wall, and
crushed both her and the child in pieces. So dismal a spectacle at any
other time would have affected me in the highest degree, but the dread
I was in of sharing the same fate myself, and the many instances of
the same kind which presented themselves all around, were too shocking
to make me dwell a moment on this single object.

"I now had a long, narrow street to pass, with the houses on each side
four or five stories high, all very old, the greater part already
thrown down, or continually falling, and threatening the passengers
with inevitable death at every step, numbers of whom lay killed before
me, or what I thought far more deplorable, so