Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1920-02-16
Orizaba manufactures
the only Beer that ever made :
Milwaukee jealous

The hotel was Of the usual type of native
Mexican hotel. 1t was quadrangular build
ing with a courtyard open to the sun, with
a fountain playing in the center. The basin
of the fountain was surrounded by low
stone wall about eighteen inches high, and
the water in the basin came to within about
six inches of the rim.
My room was on the second floor, opening
upon a balcony or roofess corridor that over
hung the courtyard.
This courtyard or patio was tagged with
big stones. In its rear. on the ground floor
of the hotel, were the quarters of the servants
and poems employed around the place.
TT WAS bright hot afternoon, with not
L cloud in the sky. The courtyard was
deserted and the hotel. from the prevailing
quetudc, seemed to be asleep. 1t was siesta,
or restt time.
The single door opening on to the veranda
was wide open as 7 stood in front of the
bureau shaving. There was no other exit
from the room. which rcsembled big stone
cell.
Suddenly the floor seemed to rise and fall
with an undulatory movement. and Tor an
instant experienced feeling of nausea like
a sudden qualm of seasckness.
Your liver's out of order was my men,
tai exclamation as I steadied myself with
one hand on the bureau
simultaneously from somewhere close at
hand came series of the most piercing
shrieks in woman's voice that I had ever
heard. They were of woman in frenzy
of terror. I dropped my razor and rushed
out on the balcony, to find my travelling com
panion, who had the adjoining room, ahead
of me.
"What is it," he cried as the screams
continued ] noticed people rushing from the
servants quarters toward the center of the
courtyard and the fountain.
! hurried forward on the balcony. and in
the second room beyond my own, the door of
which was open, l saw stout Mexican lady
of about forty in the arms of an understood
gray haired gentleman her senior. who was
yainly endeavorng to soothc her. The woman
was ghastly pale and the husband, who was
very dark, was yellowish hue with fear.
whats the natter" ! asked.
''Tremblor! Tremblor'" he replied in
Spanish.
1t was an earthquake shock.
| turned and looked down in the court
ward. to see the servants and many of the
guests of the hotel on their knees around
the fountain, with hands and eyes raised to
heaven in prayer. In contrast to the Shrek
from those in the courtyard They were too
busy praying and awaiting the next act in
the seismic drama.
I'm less time that it takes to tell it, in
the phraseology of decadent literary style,
my companion and myself. with safety first
uppermost with the Shreking woman and
her terrorized husband following, ran along
the balcony, down the stairway at the end
and out into the public square, beyond the
danger at least of tumbling walls.
We found a score of people ahead Of us,
while others came rushing from the surround
ing stores and dwellings, heading for the
center of the square, the only safety zone in
sight.
TNHERE were no other immediate shocks.
l. After time, following the example of
the natives, we returned to our rooms.
The proprietor of the hotel illustrated the
force of the disturbance by pointing to the
fountain. The tremor had been heavy
enough to lift the placid water in the basin
six inches and dash it over the rim, where it
had dribbled away in little streams on the
pavement.
TN MY rambling around Orizaba afterward
l. ] discovered that no great damage had
been done beyond shaking some stones from
the walls of old buildings and breaking off
a tall flagpoc in front of one of the public
structures.
1t was the shock that virtually destroyed
! the city of Chilpanzinga, where hundreds of
persons had been killed in that little city and
| the surrounding villages.
The earthquakes reported by telegraph
from Vera Cruz during the last month or so
had their center of disturbance in the state
of Vera Cruz The upheaval was on the
western side of the earthquake belt It's
most disastrous effects were in the vicinity
of Jalapa. where villages were wiped out OF
existence both by earthquake shock and vol
canic eruption The town of Barranca
Grande was overwhelmed.
Another time the unenviabe experience OF
feeling an earth tremor came to me in Ca
racas, Venezuela. 1t was barely perceptiblo.
however, and no damage was done TO prom
erty.
The inhabitants of Caracas are not dis
turbed, as a rule, by these occasional evi
dences of the instability of the soil, although
one of the greatest catastrophes of modern
times occurred there in the early part of the
eighteenth century. A large part of the city
was completely destroyed, thousands were
killed and thousands more died from disease
and starvation that followed the upheavaI.
The great bulk of the estimated million
now living in this country who have ex-
nerienced an earthquake shock are survivors
Of the Charleston disaster of 1885 and the
California earthquake OF 1906.