Mr. Sullivan to Mr. Seward.
Sir: Ecuador is perishing; her capital, Quito, has been assailed by a violent earthquake; her next largest city, of ten thousand inhabitants, has vanished into the newly-opened jaws of mother earth. Earthquakes, volcanoes, have visited her with a red-hot rod of vengeance, which, as the accredited report now stands, has caused her to almost vanish from the fond gaze of her sister republics.
Her minister, now by my side, tells me that all the public buildings in Quito have been either destroyed or shaken to the foundation; that several towns have, with their inhabitants, almost entirely disappeared; that on the 16th of August last, the day of their destruction, a cloud of darkness had gathered over and around the doomed places of fond abode; that deafening peals of thunder and vivid flashes of lightning were answered by horrid shocks of earthquakes and numerous founts of smoke and fire spouting from the trembling earth, which in some parts opened its devouring mouths, and all within their reach had sunk into the gulf below; that the adjacent hills had blazed with jetting fire and thrown volcanic showers around them; that no fewer than thirty thousand persons had perished in this terrible catastrophe, whose loss throws a fearful pall over all the heretofore happy and thriving but now mourning people of Ecuador. The end is not yet fully known here.
The minister also says that our legation’s valuable effects in Quito must have been destroyed or greatly damaged, and that at the time of this appalling visitation of God’s manifest power there resided a large number of our people in that city. I suggest, therefore, that oar government send an authorized officer to Quito to ascertain our loss.
I have the honor to be, sir, your obedient servant,
Hon. William H. Seward, Secretary of State, Washington, D. C.