A flash and a roar passed through the earth, and a jagged chasm followed
in its track, creating others in its rapid clash and close. Whole
cities shivered, tottered, reeled, and fell in spreading heaps of
undistinguishable ruin. In one minute and fifteen seconds, twenty
thousand human beings perished in Venezuela; and then the Earthquake of
Caracas ceased.

It was after four o'clock in the afternoon when the first subterranean
shock was felt; and long before five the agonized earth was still. Long
before five, the stupefied survivors stood slowly recovering their
faculties of speech and motion. Long before five, a piteous wail
ascended to heaven from fathers and husbands and wives and mothers,
desolately mourning the dead in the streets of Caracas, La Guayra,
Mérida, San Felipe, and Valencia. In this manner the Holy Thursday of
1812 drew toward its close. But the physical disasters consequent upon
the great earthquake were of insignificant import as compared with its
moral effect. Colonist and Spaniard had shared alike in suffering and
death during those dreadful moments; but the superstitious population
readily accepted the interpretation which an eager priesthood placed
upon the event, and bowed in the belief that they had suffered
the infliction in punishment of their rebellion against the King.
Nine-tenths of the clergy and monastic brotherhood inwardly hated
and feared the Revolution, and their practised tongues drew terrible
auguries for rebellious Venezuela from the recent throes and upheaval of
the earth. Preachers solemnly proclaimed the fact, that this, without
doubt, was a catastrophe akin to the memorable convulsion which once had
swallowed up Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for mutiny against the Lord; and
the proximate wrath of God could be appeased only by a retrogression
into his chosen paths. The people listened to the fathers, and obeyed
trembling. Miranda, who had struggled against and overcome the material