Page:Letters from the Battle-fields of Paraguay (1870).djvu/157



NATIVES AND FOREIGNERS. 127

I paid two short visits to Monte Video. During my first, on August 13, 1868, at about 10 p.m., burst a terrific storm of thunder and lightning, wind and rain, till the sluice- gates above seemed to run dry. The inhabitants compared it with the great S. Joseph hurricane of March, 1866, and at Buenos Aires some thirty people were drowned. In due time the post brought us the intelligence of that earthquake, perhaps the most terrible recorded in history, which, be- ginning at 5 to 6 P.M., laid waste the west coast of South America, and the interior of Peru and Ecuador. As always happens, the effects of the atmospheric wave outran the water wave, even more than this did the earth wave. The remnant of the year, and part of 1869, both at Buenos Aires and at Monte Video â€” to mention no other places â€” were unusually cold, hot and rainy, the citi- zens did not remember such captiousness of climate for ten years. Similarly, in August, 1868, the earthquake of Hawaii was followed by a storm, the air felt like steam, and white streams of lightning ran along the ground. During the same year deluges of summer rain, with thunder and lightning, extending from April to September, accompanied throughout Naples the eruption of Vesuvius.

My second was in 1869, at the end of the Holy Week, a " Great Juju,^' wherein the " cold intellectuality of the advanced Protestant " finds the death and resurrection of Adonai, the sun-god. The crossed yards of ships showed Good Friday ; during Long Gospel and the Adoration of the Cross, the cathedral was crowded, and the Negro sen- tinels and policemen were as troublesome as they are wont to be when they can. On Holy Saturday, bells, squibs, and all kinds of noises accompanied the " toca da gloria." The four piers of the cathedral, generally white and blue, with gilt capitals, were hung with red silk, the gilt pulpit sent forth muffled thunder, crowds worshipped before the