ul
pall.

The room looked strange and mysterious in its living, moving covering.
Here was indeed the blackness of darkness. Yes, and it was a darkness too
that could be felt. Of this I had a speedy proof of a most disagreeable
nature. I was glad to hand the lantern back and seek for safety in the
rain again.

Luckily the sitting-room door was shut, and this was the only room not
taken possession of.

After lights had been lit in the drawing-room the storm did not appear
quite so terrible; but no one thought of retiring that night. The vague
fear that something more dreadful still might occur kept hanging in our
minds, and was only dispelled when daylight began to stream in at the
windows.

By breakfast-time there was no sign in the blue sky that so fearful a
storm had recently raged there. Nor had any very great violence been done
about the farmyards by the earthquake.

Many of the cattle that had sought shelter beneath the trees had been
killed, however; and in one spot we found the mangled remains of over one
hundred sheep. Here also a huge chestnut-tree had been struck and
completely destroyed, pieces of the trunk weighing hundreds of pounds
being scattered in every direction over the field.

Earthquakes are of common occurrence in the province of Mendoza, but
seldom are they accompanied by such thunder, lightning, and rain as we had
on this occasion. It was this demonstration, coupled with the warning
words of the Indian seer, which had caused the panic among our worthy
Gaucho servants. But the seer had been a false prophet for once, and as
the Gauchos seized him on this same day and half drowned him in the lake,
there was but little likelihood that he would prophesy the destruction of
Mendoza again.

Mendoza had been almost totally destroyed already by an awful earthquake
that occurred in 1861. Out of a population of nearly sixteen thousand
souls no less than thirteen thousand, we are told, were killed--swallowed
up by the yawning earth. Fire broke out afterwards, and, as if to
increase the wretchedness and sad condition of the survivors, robbers from
all directions--even from beyond the Andes--flocked to the place to loot
and pillage it. But Mendoza is now built almost on the ashes of the
destroyed city, and its population must be equal to, even if it does not
exceed, its former aggregate.

* * * * *

With the exception of a few losses, trifling enough to one