that there are few parts in which the passenger is not obliged either to ascend or to descend. Previously to the earthquake, no place could be better supplied with water than this. The streams which passed through it were conducted to an infinity both of public and priyate fountains. The streets of Caraccas were about twenty feet wide and well paved. In the grand square, called Plaza Mayor, the market was held. Here vegetables, fruit, meat, salted provisions, fish, poultry, game, bread, parrots, monkeys, slaves, birds, and innumerable other things were sold. The cathedral was on the eastern side of the square, but its style of architecture was very bad. The houses were, in general, well built; and many of them were handsomely furnished. Those of the most wealthy inhabitants had beautiful and expensive looking-glasses. At the windows, and over the inside doors, were elegant curtains of crimson damask. The rooms had chairs and sofas of wood, the seats of which were covered with leather or damask, and adorned with gothic work, but overloaded with gilding. The principal sleeping rooms had bedsteads with deep head boards, richly gilded; furniture of damask, rich counterpanes, and down pillows, in fine muslin cases, trimmed with lace. The eye wandered also over tables with gilded legs, chests of drawers, on which the gilder had exhausted all the resources of his art; brilliant lustres, suspended in the principal apartments; cornices, which seemed as if they had been dipped in gold; and rich carpets, that covered all those parts of the rooms in which the seats of honour were placed.

Caraccas, at this time, possessed no other public edifices than such as were dedicated to religion, except the barracks for the troops that were quartered in the town. These were new, handsomely built, and situated on a spot which commanded a view of the whole place.

Religious festivals were so numerous at Caraccas, that there were few days in the year on which some saint, male or female, was not celebrated; and, on these occasions, after prayers in the churches, the day

generally closed with public amusements, such as fireworks, concerts, and balls. But the most brilliant act of each festival was the procession of the saint, who was to be celebrated. This always took place in the afternoon. A figure of the saint, as large as life, and richly habited, was carried on a handsomely decorated'. table, and either preceded or followed by some other saint of the same church, less sumptuously adorned. A number of flags and crosses opened the march. The men walked in two lines. Each of the principal persons carried in his hand a wax taper, Then came the music, the clergy, the civil authorities, and lastly, women, surrounded by a barrier of bayonets. The train was always very numerous. The frames of all the windows, in the streets through which the procession moved, were ornamented with hangings; and the windows themselves were adorned with women, who crowded to them from all parts of the city, to witness the exhibition.

The pomp of having numerous servants was here carried to a great extent. Every one who could afford it, had about his house four or five times as many domestic slaves as their work required. It is probable, observes M. Depons, that there was not in the whole of the West Indies, a place where there were so many freed persons, or descendants from freed persons, in proportion to the other classes, as in this. They here exercised various handicraft trades: almost every carpenter, joiner, cabinet-maker, mason, blacksmith, tailor, and shoe-maker, was a freed man. But they excelled in none of these trades, because they learned them only mechanically, and without any knowledge of the principles.

With regard to the tremendous and awful catastrophe, which, on the 26th of March, 1812, laid the whole city in ruins, it was remarked, that, previously to the moment of its occurrence, a great drought had prevailed throughout the whole province.

Not a single drop of rain had fallen within ninety leagues of Caraccas, during the five preceding months. On the 26th of March the weather was remarkably hot: the air was calm, and the sky unclouded. It was Holy Thursday, and a great part of the population was assembled in the churches. Nothing seemed to presage the calamities which took place. At seven minutes after four in the afternoon, the first shock was felt. It was sufficiently powerful to make the bells in the churches toll; and it lasted five or six minutes, during which time the ground was in a continual undulating movement, and seemed to heave up like a boiling liquid. The danger was thought to be past, when a tremendous subterraneous noise was heard, resembling the rolling of thunder, loud and of long continuance. This noise preceded a perpendicular motion of three or four seconds, followed by an undulatory movement somewhat longer. The shocks were in opposite directions, from north to south, and from east to west. Within the space of a single minute, the whole town was overthrown; and near ten thousand of the inhabitants were buried under the ruins of the houses and churches. The procession had not yet set out; but the crowd was so great in the churches, that betwixt three and four thousand persons were crushed by the fall of their vaulted roofs. Two of the churches, each more than one hundred and fifty feet high, and supported by pillars of twelve or fifteen feet in diameter, left masses of ruin scarcely exceeding six feet in elevation: the sinking of the ruins was so great that there scarcely remained any vestiges of pillars or columns. The barracks almost wholly disappeared. A regiment of troops of the line, that was assembled under arms, ready to join the procession, was, with the exception of a few men, buried under the ruins of this great edifice. Nine-tenths of the town were entirely destroyed; and the walls of such of the houses as were not thrown down were cracked in such a manner as to be uninhabitable. The cathedral, supported by enormous buttresses, remained standing.

The ensuing night presented the most distressing scene of desolation and sorrow that can be imagined. A thick cloud of dust, which had risen high above the ruins and darkened the sky like a fog, had settled on the ground. No shock was now felt, and never was a night more calm or serene. The moon, nearly full, illumined the whole scene, and the aspect of the sky formed a perfect contrast to that of the earth, covered with the dead, and heaped with ruins. Mothers were seen bearing in their arms their children, whom they hoped to recal to life. Desolated families wandered through the city, seeking brothers, husbands, friends, of whose fate they were ignorant, and whom they believed to have been lost in the crowd. The people pressed along streets, which could not now be recog nized but by long piles of ruins. The wounded, buried under the ruins, implored, by their cries, the help of those who passed by, and nearly two thousand were dug out. Never was pity displayed in a more affecting manner: never had it been more ingeniously active than in the efforts that were employed to save the ́miserable victims, whose groans reached the ear. plements for digging and clearing away the ruins were entirely wanting; and the people were obliged to use their bare hands to disinter the living. The wounded were laid on the banks of the small river Guayra, with no other shelter than the foliage of the trees. Beds, linen to dress the wounds, instruments of surgery, medicines, and objects of the most urgent necessity, had all been buried under the ruins. During the first days, every thing, even food, was wanting. Water also became scarce in the city. The commotion had rent the pipes of the fountains: the falling in of the earth had choked up the sources from which they had been supplied: and it became necessary, in order to obtain water, to go down to the Guayra, and vessels to convey it in were wanting.

Im

There remained a duty to be fulfilled toward the dead, which was enjoined at once by piety and the dread of infection. As it was impossible to inter so

many thousand corpses half buried under the ruins, commissaries were appointed to burn them. For this purpose, immense funeral piles were erected among the heaps of ruins; and the afflicting ceremony lasted several days. Amid so many calamities, the people devoted themselves to those religious duties, which they thought were most fitted to appease the wrath of heaven. Some, assembling in processions, sang funeral hymns: others, in a state of distraction, confessed their sins aloud in the streets. Restitutions were promised by persons who had never been accused of fraud; and families, who had long been enemies, were now drawn together by the tie of common calamity.

Twelfth Day's Instruction.

TERRA FIRMA CONTINUED.

FROM Caraccas we will accompany Baron de Humboldt and his friend on their excursion across the valleys of Aragua to the river Apuré. The account of their voyage down that river, and up the Oronoko to the Great Cataract, has already been related.

Narrative of the Journey of Messrs. HUMBOLDT and BONPLAND from the Caraccas to the river Apuré.

THESE gentlemen set out from Caraccas on the 7th of February, 1800: and, following the right bank of the river Guayra, by a road cut out of the rock, they soon afterwards reached La Vega. The church of this village displayed itself in a picturesque manner, on a range of hills covered with vegetation; and the scattered houses, surrounded by date trees, seemed to proclaim the easy circumstances of the inhabitants. The rounded summit of an adjacent mountain, and a ridge