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186 about the plains, to ask charity at the doors of the huts and buildings which served as the temporary habitations of those who had survived the ruins of their beloved country. This calamitous event would have been attended by the most fatal consequences to the establishment of orphan children, but for the prudent measures adopted by the viceroy, one of whose earliest precautions was to place in security the little that still belonged to the hospital, whether resulting from the remnants of the extinguished brotherhood, or from the arrears belonging to the funds of the house. Several administrators, selected from among the distinguished class of the citizens, were at the same time appointed to succeed those who had belonged to the religious community. In 1718, the hospital found a new benefactor in the person of Don Antonio De Zolpaga, the archbishop of Lima, who, observing the extreme poverty of the institution, among other donations, ordered the, sum of eight hundred and forty piastres to be annually taken from his revenues, for the support of ten nurses.

The establishment was once more in a flourishing condition, when another earthquake, which occurred on the 28th of October 1746, renewed the disastrous scenes that had accompanied the preceding one of 1687. The same devastations Vere productive of a similar desertion of the dwellings; but this catastrophe was not attended by equally fatal consequences to the orphans. Their administrator, Don Joseph De Herrara, made every possible effort to afford them succour, and witnessed the re-establishment of the hospital, before he was snatched off by death, to reap the fruits of his compassion and christian charity.

The viceroy, count Superunda, obtained, in 1755, a royal schedule