Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. III, No. XVII, October 1851. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
been already noticed that the number of deaths constantly and greatly exceeds that of births. Among adults the most fatal disease is dysentery; then comes fever, usually intermittent; then consumption, inflammation of the lungs, and dropsy, the latter usually the result of intermittent fever.
Another fearful compensation for the mildness of the elements above the surface of the earth, is found in the frequency of subterranean disturbances. On an average, there are 45 shocks of earthquakes in the course of a year. These usually occur in the months from October to January, and again in May and June. But at intervals of from 40 to 60 years, the valley of the Rimac experiences an earthquake of far more desolating force, and by which Lima has several times been reduced to a heap of rubbish. The most destructive of these, since the European conquest were those of 1586, 1630, 1687, 1713, 1746, 1806 – two in each completed century; so that the experience of the past gives us every reason to anticipate that many years will not elapse before Lima will once more become a mass of ruins.
The most destructive of this regular series of great earthquakes was that of October 26, 1746. A little more than an hour before midnight, the earth began to tremble, and in three minutes from the time of the first shock, the city lay in ruins. Of more than 3000 houses, only 21 escaped entire. The towers of the Cathedral were overthrown. The bridge across the Rimac was almost the only public work which escaped, and of that one arch, upon which stood an equestrian statue of Philip V., was destroyed. But if Lima was sorely shattered, Callao was annihilated. The sea receded suddenly from the shore, and as suddenly rolled back with irresistible force, overwhelming the devoted city, with all its inhabitants, 5000 in number. Of these, it is popularly related, that only one escaped. A Spanish corvette which lay at anchor, was lifted sheer over the walls of the fortress, and deposited a full mile inshore, at a spot still designated by a cross erected to commemorate the fact. All the other vessels in the harbor were sunk. The modern town of Callao stands at the distance of two miles from the site of the old town, of which not a vestige remains. It is popularly affirmed that in a clear day the ruins of the old town may still be seen beneath the waves; but travelers, whose imagination is not keener than their vision, have vainly strained their sight to discover a trace of the lost city.
No familiarity with earthquakes is sufficient to do away with their terrors. The Limanian who has known them from childhood, no sooner feels the first shock, than he rushes from his apartment, with the cry of "misericordia" upon his trembling lips, no less than the foreigner who has never before witnessed these convulsive throes of nature. The moment a shock is felt the Cathedral bell begins to toll, all the belfries in Lima take up the sound, and summon the affrighted population to their devotions. A change has been wrought even in the form of church service, by the ever-present apprehension of these convulsions: the word "famine" being omitted and "earthquake" inserted among the evils from which deliverance is implored. The very architecture of Lima – its houses of a singly story – its plastered upper walls, its cane roofs, its towers and steeples of stuccoed wicker work – is a perpetual prayer against an evil which no human foresight can avoid, and no mortal power avert, and in respect to which the utmost that man can do, is in some degree to mitigate its consequences.
ALLY SOMERS. – A TALE OF THE COAST-GUARD
When I joined the Scorpion sloop of war, then (1810) on the West India station, there were a father and son among the crew whose names, as borne on the ship's books, were John Somers and John Alice Somers. The oddity in this country of giving a boy a female baptismal name had been no doubt jestingly remarked upon by those who were aware of it, but with the sailors the lad passed as Ally Somers. The father was approaching fifty, the son could not have been more than seventeen years of age. The elder Somers, who had attained to the rating of a boatswain, was a stern, hard, silent man, with a look as cold and clear as polished steel, and a cast-iron mouth, indicative of inflexible, indomitable firmness of will and resolution. The son, on the contrary, though somewhat resembling his father in outline of feature, had a mild, attractive, almost feminine aspect, and a slight graceful frame. I was not long in discovering that, obdurate and self-engrossed as the man appeared, the boy was really the idol-image in which his affections and his hopes were centred. His eye constantly followed the motions of the lad, and it appeared to be his unceasing aim and study to lighten the duties he had to perform, and to shield him from the rough usage to which youngsters in his position were generally subjected by the motley crews of those days. One day a strong instance in proof of this master-feeling occurred. Ally Somers some time previously, when on shore with a party dispatched to obtain a supply of water, had, during the temporary absence of the officer in command, been rather severely rope's-ended by one of the seamen for some trifling misconduct, and a few slight marks were left on the lad's back. The rage of the father, when informed of the circumstance, was extreme, and it was with difficulty that he was restrained from inflicting instant chastisement on the offender. An opportunity for partially wreaking his hoarded vengeance occurred about six weeks afterward, and it was eagerly embraced. The sailor who had ill-used young Somers was sentenced to receive two dozen lashes for drunkenness and insubordination. He was ordered to strip, placed at the gratings, and the punishment began. Somers the boatswain, iron or sour-tempered as he might be, was by no means harsh or cruel in his office, and his assistants, upon whom the revolting office of flogging usually devolved, influenced by him, were about the gentlest-handed boatswain's-mates I ever saw practice. On this occasion he was in another and a very different mood. Two blows only had been struck, when Somers, with an angry rebuke to the mate for not doing his duty, snatched the cat from his hand, and himself lashed the culprit with a ferocity so terribly effective, that Captain Boyle, a merciful and just officer, instantly remitted half the number of lashes, and the man was rescued from the unsparing hands of the vindictive boatswain.
Other instances of the intensity of affection glowing within the stern man's breast for his comparatively weak and delicate boy manifested themselves. Once in action, when the lad, during a tumultuous and murderous struggle in beating off a determined attempt to carry the sloop by boarding, chanced to stumble on the slippery deck, he was overtaken before he could recover himself, and involved in the fierce assault which at the forecastle was momently successful. I was myself hotly engaged in another part of the fight; but attention being suddenly called to the forepart of the ship by the enemy's triumphant shouts, I glanced round just in time to see the boatswain leap, with the yell and bound of a tiger, into the mêlée, and strike right and left with such tremendous ferocity and power as instantly to check the advancing rush. Our men promptly rallied, and the deck was in a few minutes cleared of every living foe that had recently profaned it. Ally Somers, who had received a rather severe flesh wound, and fainted from loss of blood, was instantly caught up by his father, and carried with headlong impatience below. When the surgeon, after a brief look at the hurt, said, "There is no harm done, Somers," the high-strung nerves of the boatswain gave way, and he fell back upon a locker, temporarily prostrate and insensible from sudden revulsion of feeling. Several times I was an unintentional auditor of scraps of conversation between the two while the lad was on the sick-list, from which I gathered that Ally was the sole issue of a marriage which had left bitter memories in the mind of the father; but whether arising from the early death of his wife, or other causes, I did not ascertain. Somers was, it appeared a native of the west of England, and it was quite evident had received a much better education than usually falls to individuals of his class.
At the close of the war Somers and his son were, with thousands of others, turned adrift from the royal service. Some months after my appointment to the command of the revenue-cutter, I chanced to meet the father in the village of Talton, about four miles out of Southampton, on the New Forest Road. He had, I found re-entered the navy, but chancing to receive a hurt by the falling of a heavy block on his right knee, had been invalided with a small pension, upon which he was now living at about a hundred yards from the spot where we had accidentally met. Ally, he informed me, was the skipper of a small craft, trading between Guernsey and Southampton. There was little change in the appearance of the man except that the crippled condition of his leg appeared to have had an effect the reverse of softening upon his stem and rugged aspect and temper. When paid off he was, I knew, entitled to a considerable sum in prize-money, the greater part of which he told me he had recently received.
About two months after this meeting with the father I fell in with the son. I was strolling at about eleven in the forenoon along the front of the Southampton