This apathy of the native population, amounting to a kind of stupor, since it abolished even begging, stood out sharply before us, when we went ashore, in contrast to the activity of the military forces. As we turned to the left down the long Marina—we had landed near the northern extremity of the town and it was clear that the center of things was far to the south—the way was so crowded that we could not walk more than two abreast, and were often obliged to fall into single file. The Marina is a broad promenade along the water’s edge; but at least half its width was blocked with debris from the palaces at the back; and on the water side the way was stopped by impediments of all kinds; piles of lumber, blanket heaps and rude huts put up for temporary shelter—tarpaulins spread over poles, for the most part. As we walked down the middle, picking our way among the cracks and fissures in the ground, we were constantly making way for troops of soldiers with spades and pick-axes over their shoulders. Almost equally numerous were the parties bearing long lines of litters. They were marching in our direction or else out of side streets to our right; and as they passed we looked nervously at each burden, to see whether the face was uncovered. Sometimes it was; occasionally even the occupant of the litter was raised on his elbow, staring with uncomprehending curiosity at the crowd on either side. More often no face was exposed; then we knew that the man was one of those dead who encumbered the path to the living. No bodies were touched, we knew, unless they actually impeded the work of rescue. Otherwise they must be left alone; the living had the first claim. Yet the line of litters was unending.
Illustrating the Capriciousness of the Earthquake.
Soldiers Bearing a Wounded Man Rescued on the Seventh Day After the Earthquake.
On our right the view of the town was screened by a line of fairly intact house fronts. The principal palaces of Messina had flanked the Marina; their outer walls had resisted bravely, on the whole. Such glimpses as we got of the interiors made it clear that those walls were mere shells; still they gave to the Marina a deceptive appearance of solidity. Between the palaces, however, came long heaps of mere debris, thirty or forty feet high. One of them we knew must be our consulate; but which? No one could tell us. No one could even direct us to the military headquarters, or to the office of the Prefect. The Italian officers knew less than the native inhabitants; they were strangers and newcomers like ourselves. We walked ahead at random towards the curve at the southern end of the harbor where masts and funnels were most numerous. Occasionally, as we passed a side street less completely blocked than the rest, we got a view of the interior of the town—an incoherent extravagance of ruin such as no pen can describe. The street always ended in a mountainous mass of wreckage; but the houses at the sides had assumed every variety of fantastic attitude. Beams and pillars crossing at absurd angles; windows twisted to impossible shapes, floors like “montagnes russes;” roofs half detached and protruding, preserved in place quite inexplicably. And then front walls torn away, laying bare the interior of apartments. In the same house one room would be a heap of wreckage, and its neighbor absolutely intact, with the music open at the piano, a marked book on the table, and the Italian Royal Family looking down from the walls. A third room perhaps held nothing but a chandelier, but that chandelier in perfect condition, without a broken globe. No two houses were alike; the earthquake had picked its victims here and there, following no predictable rule. Sometimes the victims could be seen lying in their own houses. Here and there a rope of knotted sheets hanging from a window showed where someone had escaped. And everywhere solitude and silence, save for the sound of the pick and the shovel. Only the soldiers and officials were allowed in the town: all others must remain on the Marina.
RED CROSS STATION.
A little this side of the Municipio, or city hall, which we identified through the flames and smoke in which it was enveloped, we came upon a Red Cross station—a square building belonging to the Custom House. Here, stretched out in the sun, lay the rescued of the day—five or six only, for it was not yet nine o’clock. Opposite the Municipio was the covered market, now the home of hundreds of survivors, and a place where bread was distributed. Between the market and the Municipio a marble Neptune of the eighteenth century still posed in nude absurdity. The most trivial of figures in the most trivial of poses had been spared, to the tips of his silly fingers, to stand between the flaming wreckage of the palace and the human wreckage of the market. Still further along, where the Marina widened again, we came upon the landing where the dead were laid out—men, women and children, all deposited in haste under some inadequate covering; a ghastly sight. From time to time a row boat would come up to the landing. The bodies were piled into it, and rowed out to sea.