The terrible subterranean revolution which convulsed all Asia Minor and Syria in the reign of Tiberius, destroyed twelve celebrated cities in a single night. The sun, which on setting had gilded their temples and palaces with his parting rays, beheld them prostrate on the following morning.
In A.D. 115 Antioch was the centre of a great commotion. The city was full of soldiers under Trajan; heavy thunder, excessive winds, and subterranean noises were heard; the earth shook, the houses fell; the cries of people buried in the ruins passed unheeded. The Emperor leaped from a window, while mountains were broken and thrown down, and rivers disappeared, and were replaced by others in a new situation. Four centuries later (May 20, 526) the same doomed city was totally subverted by an earthquake, when it is reported that 250,000 persons perished.
Similar catastrophes, in which thousands and thousands of victims were suddenly destroyed, have frequently occurred in Peru and Chili, in the West Indies and Central America, in the Moluccas and Java, in the countries bordering on the Mediterranean and the Red Sea; but a bare mention of the loss of life conveys but a faint idea of the extent of misery inflicted by one of those great earthquakes which mark with an ominous shade many large tracts of the earth’s surface.
We must picture to ourselves the slow lingering death which is the fate of many—some buried alive, others burnt in the fire which almost invariably bursts out in a city where hundreds of dwellings have suddenly been laid prostrate—the numbers who escaped with loss of limbs or serious bodily injuries, and the surviving multitude, suddenly reduced to penury and want.
In the Calabrian earthquake of 1783, it is supposed that about a fourth part of the inhabitants of Polistena and of some other towns were buried alive, and might have been saved had there been no want of hands; but in so general a calamity, where each was occupied with his own misfortunes or those of his family, help could seldom be procured. ‘It frequently happened,’ says Sir Charles Lyell, ‘that persons in search of those most dear to them could hear their moans, could recognise their voices, were certain of the exact spot where they lay buried beneath their feet, yet could afford them no succour. The piled mass resisted all their strength, and rendered their efforts of no avail. At Terranuova four Augustin monks, who had taken refuge in a vaulted sacristy, the arch of which continued to support a vast pile of ruins, made their cries heard for the space of four days. One only of the brethren of the whole convent was saved, and of what avail was his strength to remove the enormous weight of rubbish which had overwhelmed his companions? He heard their voices die away gradually, and when afterwards their four corpses were disinterred, they were found clasped in each other’s arms.’[arms.’]
Affecting narratives are preserved of mothers saved after the fifth, sixth, and even seventh day of their interment, when their infants or children had perished with hunger. In his work on the great Neapolitan earthquake of 1857, Mr. Mallet, from innumerable narratives of personal peril and sad adventure, selects the distressing case of a noble family of Monte Murro, as affording a vivid picture of the terrors of an earthquake night. Don Andrea del Fino, the owner of one of the few houses in the city which escaped total destruction, was with his wife in bed, his daughter sleeping in an adjacent chamber on the principal floor. At the first shock his wife, who was awake, leaped from bed, and immediately after, a mass of the vaulting above came down, and buried her sleeping husband. At the same moment, the vault above their daughter’s room fell in upon her. From the light and hollow construction of the vaults neither was at once killed. The signora escaped by leaping from the front window, she scarcely knew how. For more than two hours she wandered, unnoticed, amongst the mass of terrified survivors in the streets, before she could obtain aid from her own tenants and dependants, to extricate her husband. They got him out after more than eighteen hours’ entombment—alive, indeed, but maimed and lame for life. His daughter was dead. As he lay longing despairingly for release from the rubbish, which a second shock, an hour after the first, had so shaken and closed in around him that he could scarcely breathe, he heard, but a few feet off, her agonising cries and groans grow fainter and fainter, until at last they died away. His wife, to whose devotion his own life was owing, had escaped unhurt.
Unfortunately man too often vies with the brute forces of nature to increase the horrors of a great earthquake. As the arm of the law is paralysed by the general panic, thieves and ruffians are not slow to avail themselves of their opportunity. Thus in the Calabrian catastrophe of 1783, nothing could be more atrocious than the conduct of the peasants, who abandoned the farms and flocked in great numbers into the towns—not to rescue their countrymen from a lingering death, but to plunder. They dashed through the streets amid tottering walls and clouds of dust, trampling beneath their feet the bodies of the wounded and half buried, and often stripping them, while yet living, of their clothes.
From the vast ruin and misery they entail, it is evident that where earthquakes are frequent, there can never be perfect security of property even under the best government; and as the fruits collected by the labour of many years may be lost in an instant, the progress of civilisation and national wealth must necessarily be retarded.
‘Earthquakes alone,’ says Mr. Darwin, ‘are sufficient to destroy the prosperity of any country. If beneath England the now inert subterranean forces should exert those powers which most assuredly in former geological ages they have exerted, how completely would the entire condition of the land be changed! What would become of the lofty houses, thickly packed cities, great manufactories, the beautiful public and private edifices? If the new period of disturbance were first to commence by some great earthquake in the dead of the night, how terrific would be the carnage! England would at once be bankrupt; all papers, records, and accounts would from that moment be lost. Government, being unable to collect the taxes, and failing to maintain its authority, the hand of violence and rapine would remain uncontrolled. In every large town famine would go forth, pestilence and death following in its train.’
Fortunately the experience of many ages shows that the regions subject to these terrible catastrophes are confined to a comparatively small part of the surface of the globe. Thus Southern Italy and Sicily; the tract embracing the Canaries, the Azores, Portugal, and Morocco; Asia Minor, Syria, and the Caucasus; the Arabian shore of the Red Sea; the East Indian Archipelago; the West Indies, Nicaragua, Quito, Peru, and Chili, are particularly liable to destructive shocks.