Note XXXVII‑62 — Chapter XXXVII · GUATEMALA AND CHIAPAS. 1701-1800.

From the incidents narrated by old residents, eye-witnesses of the event, and the appearance of the city in his time, Juarros, Guat., ii. 266-8, concludes that even the official reports of the effect of this earthquake were grossly exaggerated, probably owing to the interested reports of engineers, architects, and notaries. He quotes from two pamphlets published at Mexico in 1574, to show instances of exaggeration in the details of this calamity. In one that appears in Cadena, Breve Descrip., 40, the statement is made that trustworthy persons affirmed that during the earthquake they saw the mighty Volcan de Agua opened from cone to base by the first shocks, and again united by those that succeeded. This and other vagaries equally absurd, the effects only of a terrified imagination, form part of every description of this disaster, but do not necessarily impair the truthfulness of the account as a whole. The work of Cadena here quoted has been used as the base of the present account, and from the fact that its author was a prominent churchman, an eye-witness of the events related, and that his book, which received the sanction of superior authority, was published within a year of the occurrence, its trustworthiness can hardly be doubted. The work, a reprint of the original made in Guatemala in 1858, is a small 12mo of 56 pages, and describes the events of the period extending from June 11, 1773, to March 10, 1774, including a detailed description of the city of Guatemala, its destruction, and the measures for its removal up to the last date. It is written in the usual inflated religious style. The author, Fray Felipe Cadena, was a Dominican, professor of theology in the university of San Cárlos, synodal examiner of the archbishopric, and secretary of his order in Guatemala. There are other accounts, however, whose exaggerations are gross, and whose narrative could not have been obtained from any reliable source. According to Russell's Hist. Amer., i. 390, the city of Guatemala, with 40,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, and nearly 15,000,000 pesos in treasure and merchandise, was so completely swallowed up in April 1773 that not even a trace was left of it. Flint's Hist. and Geog. gives the date of the earthquake as 1779, and says that it was accompanied by terrific and destructive phenomena; the sea rose from its bed; one volcano poured out boiling water, another waves of blazing lava; and 8,000 families were swallowed up in a moment.