tected from further inundations by the neighouring hills. Here they founded the city called Old Guatimala or La Antigua, on the 22d of October, in the same year, and immediately proceeded to erect convents, hospitals, churches, an university, and other public buildings.
Favoured by innumerable local advantages, the new metropolis rapidly grew in importance, and promised to compete, if not in size, at least in beauty, with the most distinguished cities of the new continent. But notwithstanding all its natural advantages, it was doomed to share a similar fate to its predecessor. Between the date of its foundation and the year 1773, when it was finally abandoned as the capital, it suffered dreadfully from the calamity of earthquakes. Nine different times during this period was it in greater or less measure, overthrown, and as often rebuilt or repaired, until at length, after the shock of the year 1773, which left one part of the city in ruins, and severely injured the rest, “the inhabitants, wearied with rebuilding, resolved for the third time to remove their situation further from the volcanoes, the prolific source of all their miseries,” and after many examinations, at length fixed upon a part of the Valley of Mixco, ten leagues removed from them, where, by virtue of a royal decree, they founded in 1776 the third
metropolis.
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