Personal Narrative Of Travels To The Equinoctial Regions Of America During The Years 1799-1804 - Volume 1 - By Alexander Von Humboldt And Aime Bonpland.
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Beds, Linen To Dress The Wounds, Instruments Of Surgery,
Medicines, Every Object Of The Most Urgent Necessity, Was Buried In
The Ruins.
Everything, even food, was wanting; and for the space of
several days water became scarce in the interior of the city.
The
commotion had rent the pipes of the fountains; and the falling in
of the earth had choked up the springs that supplied them. To
procure water it was necessary to go down to the river Guayra,
which was considerably swelled; and even when the water was
obtained vessels for conveying it were wanting.
There was a duty to be fulfilled to the dead, enjoined at once by
piety and the dread of infection. It being impossible to inter so
many thousand bodies, half-buried under the ruins, commissioners
were appointed to burn them: and for this purpose funeral piles
were erected between the heaps of ruins. This ceremony lasted
several days. Amidst so many public calamities, the people devoted
themselves to those religious duties which they thought best fitted
to appease the wrath of heaven. Some, assembling in processions,
sang funeral hymns; others, in a state of distraction, made their
confessions aloud in the streets. In Caracas was then repeated what
had been remarked in the province of Quito, after the tremendous
earthquake of 1797; a number of marriages were contracted between
persons who had neglected for many years to sanction their union by
the sacerdotal benediction. Children found parents, by whom they
had never till then been acknowledged; restitutions were promised
by persons who had never been accused of fraud; and families who
had long been at enmity were drawn together by the tie of common
calamity.
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