The day was clear and uncommonly warm; it being Sunday the people had assembled at San Juan Capistrano for evening service. About half an hour after the opening of service, an unusual loud, but distant rushing sound was heard in the atmosphere to the east and also over the water, which resembled the sound of strong wind, but as it approached no perceptible breeze accompanied it. _The sea was smooth and the air was calm._ So distant and loud was this atmospheric sound that several left the building attracted by its noise. Immediately following the sound, the first and heaviest shock of the earthquake occurred, which was sufficiently severe to prostrate the Mission Church of San Capistrano almost in a body, burying in its ruins the most of those who remained behind, after the first indication of its approach was heard. The shock was very sudden and almost without warning, save from the rushing sound above noted, and to the severity of the first shock at that moment is to be attributed the loss of life that followed. The number reported to have been killed outright, is variously estimated from thirty to forty-five (the largest number of persons agree on the smallest number of deaths given), but in the absence of records such statements should be received with many grains of allowance, where memory alone is the only means left, and the term of forty-three years has elapsed before the period at which this account was placed on paper. A considerable number are reported to have been badly injured. There is a universal agreement on this point with those from whom these facts were derived, viz.: _that the first shock threw down the entire building, and that a large number of persons were in it at that moment_, and under the circumstances it would be most singular if no deaths were caused by such an event. It is now nine years since the above facts were published, and in March, 1864, a writer to me unknown, corroborates this statement relating to that Mission in these words. “The church thrown down at San Juan Capistrano by an earthquake in 1812, was a well built-affair of stone and cement. The cupola or short steeple falling over the church completely destroying the building.” The motion of the earth is described as having _lifted vertically_, attended by a rotatory movement. _No undulatory_ motion is described by any one. Dizziness and _nausea_ seized almost every person in the vicinity. A heavy, loud, deep rumbling, accompanied the successive shocks that followed, which were five in number, all having the motion above described, though comparatively light in their effects to the first. The sounds attending the phenomena came apparently from the South and East.