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Hence the society was far beyond what might have been imagined as regards position and general cultivation. Cua, like all Spanish American towns, was laid out at right angles, while many of the houses rivalled the handsomest in Caracas, and were furnished with equal splendor.
But it is impossible to give an adequate description of that night of horror in Cua by enumerating individual instances of suffering. Those that I have given are merely a few out of hundreds of others equally distressing. The survivors encamped upon the banks of the river Tuy, where they might well repeat those tender lines of the Psalmist: "By the waters of Babylon we sat down and wept."
But Cua unhappy Cua! was utterly destroyed. Without a moment's warning, without a single indication of their impending fate, all the inhabitants were buried beneath the mass of ruins to which in a few seconds it was reduced. Perhaps it is not strictly correct to say there had been no sign.
As soon as the disaster was made known, General Alcantara, the president of the republic, sent carts laden with provisions, blankets, shoes, hats, etc., besides money, and coaches to convey the unfortunate Cuans to their friends in the adjacent towns. The president also recommended the unfortunate people of Cua to the generosity of Congress, which was then in session.
The city of Cua was beyond comparison the richest and most flourishing of all, being situated at the head of the valley, where it opens toward the vast Llanos or plains, and being also the emporium of many extensive districts producing the staples of the country, such as coffee, cocoa, sugar and indigo.
Some of the finest plantations in the country surrounded Cua coffee, sugar, cocoa, indigo, etc. all with handsome mansions and expensive offices, with stores, sugar-mills and steam-engines, many of them worth from fifty to a hundred thousand dollars.
An eye-witness exclaims: "Of all that I have seen in what was the rich, the beautiful, the flourishing city of Cua, now a cemetery, nothing has made so profoundly melancholy an impression upon me as the cremation of the bodies of the unfortunate victims of the late disaster, tied together with ropes and dragged forth from the ruins, one over another, the stiffened limbs taking strange, unnatural attitudes, and upon being touched by the flames consuming instantly, on account of their advanced decomposition."
More, almost, than the bitterness of death itself must have been the horror of such a situation and the terrible contact during long hours of silent darkness with a cold, rigid corpse. This lady belonged to the family of Fonseca-Acosta, one of the most distinguished in Cua, its head being the eminent physician Dr.
The whole valley is studded with towns, villages and plantations: of the former, the principal are Ocumare, Charallave, Santa Teresa, Santa Lucia and Cua.
Unlike the generality of inland towns in South America, where the constitution of society is apt to be rather heterogeneous, Cua was the residence of many of the principal families of the country gentlemen at the head of wealthy commercial establishments, or opulent planters owning large estates in the neighborhood, but making the city their permanent abode.
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