spider's web which swings its frail
threads across broken columns in greater safety than any man-made
bridge of stone,--and terror, mad, hopeless, helpless terror, possesses
every creature brought face to face with the dire cruelty of natural
forces, which from the very beginning have played havoc with struggling
mankind. Struck by the hand of God!--and with a merciless blow! All the
sunny plains and undulating hills of the beautiful stretch of land in
Southern California, in the centre of which the "Plaza" hotel and
sanatorium had stood, were now unrecognisable,--the earth was torn
asunder and thrown into vast heaps--great rocks and boulders were
tumbled over each other pell-mell in appalling heights of confusion,
and, for miles around, towns, camps and houses were laid in ruins. The
scene was one of absolute horror,--there was no language to express or
describe it--no word of hope or comfort that could be fitly used to
lighten the blackness of despair and loss. Gangs of men were at relief
work as soon as they could be summoned, and these busied themselves in
extricating the dead, and rescuing the dying whose agonised cries and
moans reproached the Power that made them for such an end,--and perhaps
as terrible as any other sound was the savage roar and rush of a
loosened torrent which came tearing furiously down from the cleft hills
to the lower land, through the great canon beyond the site where the
Plaza had stood,--a canon which had become enormously widened by the
riving and the rending of the rocks, thus giving free passage to wild
waters that had before been imprisoned in a narrow gorge. The
persistent rush of the flood filled every inch of space with sound of
an awful, even threatening character, suggesting further devastation
and death. The men engaged in their dreadful task of lifting crushed
corpses from under the stones that had fallen upon them, were almost
overcome and rendered incapable of work by the appalling clamour, which
was sufficient to torture the nerves of the strongest; and some of
them, sickened at the frightful mutilation of the bodies they found
gave up altogether and dropped from sheer fatigue and exhaustion into
unconsciousness, despite the heroic encouragement of their director, a
man well used to great emergencies. Late afternoon found him still
organising and administering aid, with the assistance of two or three
Catholic priests who went about seeking to comfort and sustain those
who we