instinct of self-preservation was suspended, and men remained
thunderstricken and immoveable. On the return of reason, the first
sentiment was a sort of joy at the partial escape; but they soon gave
place to grief for the loss of family, and the overthrow of the domestic
habitation. Amidst so many aspects of death, and the apprehension even
of approaching judgment, the suspicion that friends were yet alive under
the ruins was the most excruciating affliction, since the impossibility
of assisting them rendered their death--(miserable and terrible
consolation)--a matter of preference and of hope. Fathers and husbands
were seen wandering amidst the ruins that covered the objects of their
affections, and, wanting the power to move the superincumbent masses,
were calling in vain for the assistance of the bystanders; or haply they
lay groaning, night and day, in their despair, upon the ruinous
fragments. But the most horrid fate--(a fate too dreadful to conceive or
to relate)--was theirs, who, buried alive beneath the fallen edifices,
awaited, with an anxious and doubtful hope, the chances of
relief--accusing, at first, the slowness, and then the avarice, of
their dearest relations and friends; and when they sank under hunger and
grief--with their senses and memory beginning to fail them--their last
sentiment was that of indignation against their kindred, and hatred of
humanity. Many were disinterred alive by their friends, and some by the
earthquake itself; which, overthrowing the very ruins it had made,
restored them to light. It was ultimately found, that about a fourth of
those whose bodies were recovered, might have been saved, had timely
assistance been at hand. The men were chiefly found in attitudes
indicating an effort at escape, the women with their hands covering
their face, or desperately plunged in their hair. Mothers were
discovered dead who had striven to protect their infants with their own
bodies, or lay with their arms stretched towards these objects of
affection, when separated from them by intervening masses of ruin.