Year: 1861

Valparaiso letter of May 1st, in the New
York Commercial, says:


g All the accounts received from Mendoza &C
beyond the statements at first made concernino
that fated town. Every letter that comes giving
details shows the horror of the calamity to be
more and more complete. Ruin, desolation and
death characterize the scene At the most mod
crate calculation it is now judged that ten thou
sand lives have been lost. The town was all
peace and activity. Customers were in the
shops, visitors in the parlors, loungers about
the corners--a bright moon shone-whcn in five
seconds the whole town was in u heap, or rather
series of heaps of ruins. The cloud of dust
from the fallen walls was so dense that for half
All hour the moon was invisible, an intense
darkness adding to the confusion and dismay of
survivors.


Ere long the lurid light of burning buildings,
or remains OF buildings, began to gleam. Three
different shops took fire from the lamps. Some
persons who had been buried under the walls,
but We're still alive, were burned. On every
! hand rose cries for help. But those buried un-
der the ruins were actually more in number
than the survivors. Few remained to render
aid fewer still were disposed to render it. 1t
is said that some were so terrified as to 20 away
from the town by the ranting of Jesuit, that
the world was coming at once to an end, and the
day of judgment was at hand. The supersti-
tious prophet told the people the earth would
shortly sink under them and they left the vi
cinity.


Robbery then set in. The shops and houses
were scenes of unhindered pillage. The earth
at intervals was still trembling. The savage
robbers would rob- and then kneel in prayer,
crying in a loud voice for mercy, and up and at
the work of depreciation once again. All the
time cries for assistance were assaing their ears
on every hand here u woman's voice, there the
feeble cry of an old man, but all in vain. They
would not hear.


From the town Of San Juan two hundred SOL
diers came with spades and picks, but the Gov
ernor Of Mendoza actually forbade their entering
the town! Troops from Mendoza had attacked
San Juan recently, and he affected to fear that
they had come Tor vengeance. 1t is currently
thought many lives might have been saved had
proper excavations been made at once.


One man who, at the time of the shock, was
away from his home, returning after few days,
found his children uninjured beneath the bed
stead, that is to say without scar or bruise, but
lifeless, probably from suffocation.


A nun was taken out alive who had been un-
der the ruins eight days. She was in q state of
extreme prostralion, but still living however,
she did not survive, such had been the shock to
her system, and such her exhaustion.


A man was actually taken out who had been
l6 days buried under the ruins. He had sus-
tanned bruise on the head in which worms had
bred. The poor fellow died six days after he
was taken out.


man named Godoy, with his wife, were for
some time buried in their own dining room ru-
ins. AS they lad little bread and wine, they
sustained life till relief came.


The probability is that Mendoza will never be
rebuilt. Certainly it will not on the former
site.''