GREAT EARTHQUAKE IN ANDALUSIA.
and Cordova shook from one end to the other. At Seville the terrified people rushed into the streets and camped there all night; but this city did not suffer so much as in the shock of 1755. In Granada the motions followed in rapid succession for several weeks; but though many other buildings were overthrown, the far-famed Alhambra was not injured. Twenty thousand people camped without the city gates.
The shocks were much severest in the mountainous districts. Villages and hamlets in ravines and along mountain slopes were speedily destroyed. The town of Alhama lost thirteen hundred and twenty houses at the first shock. Five hundred and seventy-six bodies were taken out of the ruins. Two hundred and eighty houses were overthrown by subsequent shocks. Abumelas lost five hundred and seventeen people, and four hundred and sixty-three houses out of four hundred and seventy-seven. More than three thousand houses were wrecked throughout Andalusia and Granada. Fifty-six towns and hamlets were greatly damaged, twenty of them entirely destroyed. Parts of mountain slopes slid slowly into the valleys. Deep crevices, like those of the Calabrian earthquakes, were opened in some localities. One of these is two miles long and of unknown depth. Boiling water burst from fissures in the mountains. The course of the river Gogollas was changed. Portions of the country were upheaved; others depressed. Shocks were felt at sea near the Azores.
Several thousands were killed and wounded, and the survivors suffered much from cold and hunger. The young King Alfonso took active part in the work of relief; but so numerous were the dead that many of them had to be buried in heaps or covered with quick-lime. There was not time to bury all properly.
Such are details of the more prominent European earthquakes. There have been others of almost equal importance; but three years ago a severe earthquake killed two thousand or more in the Italian Riviera; but the cases given well illustrate the destruction wrought in Europe, and other regions claim attention.
CHAPTER XXV.
EARTHQUAKES IN THE UNITED STATES AND ENGLAND.
The fowls of every hue,
“Crowding together, sailed on weary wing,
And hovering, oft they seemed about to light,
Then soared as if they deemed the earth unsafe.
The cattle looked with meaning face on man,
Dogs howled, and seemed to see more than their masters,
And there were sights that none had seen before.
And hollow, strange, unprecedented sounds,
And earnest whisperings ran along the hills,
At dead of night: and long, deep endless sighs
Came from the dreary vale; and from the waste
Came horrid shrieks, and fierce unearthly groans,
The wail of evil spirits that now felt
The hour of utter vengeance near at hand.
The winds from every quarter blew at once,
And shapes, strange shapes, in winding sheets were seen,
And voices talked amid the clouds: and then
Earth shook, and swam, and reeled, and oped her jaws,
By earthquake tossed and tumbled to and fro.”
T is a common assertion that when persons are drowning, all the events of past life rush suddenly before them with startling distinctness: sometimes in amusing combinations: generally the reverse.