w years twice wiped out the entire
city.

The first Bishop of Manila, Domingo de Salazar, seeing the city
exposed to such general destructions by fire like the one of February
14, 1583, gave the first impulse to the construction of stone
buildings and worked indefatigably in this direction. In person he
explored the surroundings of Manila in quest of stone quarries and by
the middle of the year 1591 he had nearly finished his palace and the
cathedral, when financial difficulties caused a temporary suspension
of the work. At the same time a great number of public and private
buildings were under construction. The enthusiasm for structures of
stone or brick with tile roofs did not diminish during the next fifty
years. The chroniclers tell us that "the Spaniards began to build
their houses of stone and tiles without the so necessary precautions
against earthquakes. * * * Beautiful structures and dwelling houses
were reared, so high and spacious that they resembled palaces;
magnificent churches with lofty and graceful towers, within the walls
of Manila as well as outside of them: all of which made the city very
beautiful and gay and contributed equally to health and pleasure." The
disaster of 1645, commonly called the earthquake of St. Andrew, as it
occurred on the feast of this apostle, November 30, razed nearly every
one of these buildings to the ground, and since then the style and
appearance of buildings has changed greatly throughout the
Archipelago, with a correspondingly great saving of lives in the
subsequent earthquakes.

Masonry arches were henceforth banished from the churches; the heavy
walls of the latter were further strengthened by massive buttresses;
and the towers were given truly enormous substructures. But even with
these precautions there is at present hardly one out of the hundreds
of churches built during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
which did not some time or other require important repairs of its
masonry work or even partial reconstruction owing to earthquake
damages. The only structure of this class which thus far has withstood
all convulsions, is the church of St. Agustin, Manila. Nevertheless,
as we have stated before, the chroniclers hardly mention all this
destruction, except in a very general and cursory manner. I do not
hesitate to say: they were accustomed to see similar havoc created
nearly every year in one part of the Archipelago or the other by some
severe typhoon, accompan