If the former account were true, we found the mouth of the Zakkar shut close enough, and its sides had grown marvellously green again since the catastrophe, though happening only a few days back. We walked round and round the town and saw no houses that had taken any harm. The shock was, nevertheless, awful, as we gathered from the plain, unvarnished account given us by the prefêt. He had expected at the time nothing more nor less than the entire destruction of Milianah.
The shock had been severely felt at Algiers and Blidah, but it was a little cluster of villages in the Metidja, by name, Bou-kika, Mouzaiaville, El-Affrom, and La Chiffa, that had suffered most. Our way lay straight through that village; and so recent was the calamity, and so inaccurate the accounts of it, that we set off to Algiers without in the least knowing where we could break the journey. Some people said, “Bou-kika is unharmed; you will find every accommodation at Bou-kika;” others said, “You will have to go right to Blidah, and break your journey there. Blidah is recovering itself, and you will find the hotels much the same as if nothing had happened.” A third said, “Blidah is as empty as a plundered place. There isn’t a crust of bread to be had there.”
In this uncertainty we set off. It was a superb moonlight night, and as we passed along, we saw woeful things.
We had talked of sleeping at Bou-kika, but Bou-kika was as dead and silent as if death were in every dwelling. Every one, in fact, was encamped outside the village, and a knot of soldiers, gathered round a watch-fire, guarded the deserted houses. Here the ruin had been partial; but soon we came to great, ghastly spectres of what, a week ago, had been thriving little towns--each with its church, its hotel, its shops and cafés. Here and there, above great heaps of brick and mortar, stood out a chimney, a wall, or a doorway, or, indeed, a whole house, split like a pomegranate; but the place had collapsed like a child’s cardhouse. One must tread upon the heels of an earthquake to understand what it is--the suddenness of it--the despair of it--the desolation of it.[14]
More than a hundred souls had been buried alive here; and what testifies to the paralysing nature of the shock is the great proportion of young children. Mothers were so horrified that they rushed out of doors, leaving their sleeping babies behind!