The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

From the city of Amantea, situated on the coast of the Tyrrhene sea, in lower Calabria, proceeding along the western coast to Cape Spartivento, in upper Calabria, and thence along the eastern coast to Cape Alice, a part of lower Calabria, on the Ionian sea, the towns and villages, amounting to nearly four hundred, whether on the coast or inland, were either totally destroyed, or suffered greatly. At Casal Nuovo, the Princess Gerace, and upward of four thousand of the inhabitants, lost their lives. At Bagnara, the number of dead amounted to upward of three thousand; and Radicina and Palmi experienced a similar loss. The total amount of the mortality occasioned by these earthquakes, in Sicily and the two Calabrias, was, agreeably to the official returns, thirty-two thousand, three hundred and sixty-seven; but Sir William Hamilton thought it still greater, and carries his estimate to forty thousand, including foreigners. On the first shock of the earthquake, on the fifth of February, the inhabitants of Scylla escaped from their houses, built on the rock, and, following the example of their prince, took shelter on the sea-shore. By this shock the sea had been raised and agitated so violently, that much damage had been done on the point of the Faro of Messina; but here it acted with still greater violence, for, during the night, an immense wave, which was falsely represented to have been boiling hot, and to have scalded many persons on its rising to a great hight, flowed furiously three miles inland, and swept off in its return two thousand, four hundred and seventy-three of the inhabitants, with the prince at their head, who were either at that time on the strand, or in boats near the shore.

The shocks felt since the commencement of these formidable earthquakes, amounted to several hundreds; and among the most violent may be reckoned the one which happened on the twenty-eighth of March. It affected most of the higher part of upper Calabria, and the inferior part of lower Calabria, being equally tremendous with the first. Indeed, these shocks were the only ones sensibly felt in Naples. With relation to the former, two singular phenomena are recorded. At the distance of about three miles from the ruined city of Oppido, in upper Calabria, was a hill, having a sandy and clayey soil, nearly four hundred feet in hight, and nearly nine hundred feet in circumference at its basis. This hill is said to have been carried to the distance of about four miles from the spot where it stood, into a plain called Campo di Bassano. At the same time, the hill on which the city of Oppido stood, and which extended about three miles, divided into two parts: being situated between two rivers, its ruins filled up the valley, and stopped their course, forming two large lakes, which augmented daily. The accounts from Sicily were of a most alarming nature. The greatest part of the fine city of Messina was destroyed by the shock of the fifth of February, and what remained was greatly injured by the subsequent shocks. The quay in the port had sunk considerably, and was in some places more than a foot beneath the water. That superb building, the palazzata, which gave the port a more magnificent appearance than any other in Europe could boast, was entirely thrown down; and the lazaretto greatly damaged. The citadel suffered little; but the cathedral was destroyed, and the tower at the point of the entrance of the harbor much damaged. The wave which had done so much mischief at Scylla, had passed over the point of land at the Faro, and swept away twenty-four persons. The accounts from Melazzo, Patti, Terra di Santa Lucia, Castro Reale, and from the island of Lipari, were very distressing, but the damage done there by the earthquakes not so considerable as at Messina.

Sir William Hamilton, from the limited boundaries of these earthquakes, was persuaded that they were caused by some great operation of nature, of a volcanic kind. To ascertain this, he began his tour by visiting the parts of the coasts of the two Calabrias which had suffered most from this severe visitation. He everywhere came to ruined towns and houses, the inhabitants of which were in sheds, many of them built on such insalubrious spots, that an epidemic had ensued. These unfortunate people agreed that every shock they had felt, seemed to come with a rumbling noise from the westward, beginning usually with the horizontal motion, and ending with the vortical (or whirling) motion, which last had ruined most of the buildings. It had also been generally observed, that, before a shock, the clouds seemed to be fixed and motionless; and that, after a heavy shower of rain, a shock quickly followed. By the violence of some of the shocks, many persons had been thrown down; and several of the peasants described the motion of the earth as so violent, that the tops of the largest trees almost touched the ground from side to side. During a shock, the oxen and horses, they said, kept their legs wide asunder, to prevent being thrown down, and gave evident signs of being sensible of the approach of each shock. Being thus warned, the neighing of a horse, the braying of an ass, or the cackling of a goose, drove them from their temporary huts.

From Monteleone, Sir William descended into the plain, and passed many towns and villages in a ruined state: the city of Mileto, lying in a bottom, was totally destroyed, without a house standing. Among the many examples afforded by these earthquakes, of animals being able to live a long time without food, was that of two hogs, which had remained buried under a heap of ruins at Soriano for forty-two days, and were dug out alive. He had frequent opportunities for observing that the habitations situated on high grounds, having a soil of a gritty sandstone, somewhat like granite, but without its consistence, suffered less than those in the plain, the soil of which is a sandy clay. The latter were universally leveled with the ground. During the first shock, he was told, a fountain of water, mixed with sand, had been forced to a considerable hight: prior to this phenomenon, the river was dry, but it soon returned and overflowed its banks. The other rivers in the plain underwent the like vicissitudes; to account for which, Sir William supposes the first impulsion of the earthquake to have come from the bottom upward; and that such was the fact, the inhabitants attested. The surface of the plain having suddenly risen, the rivers, which are not deep, would naturally disappear; and the plain seeking with violence its former level, the rivers would necessarily return and overflow, at the same time that the sudden depression of the boggy grounds would as naturally force out the water which lay hidden beneath the surface.

It had been stated, in the reports made to the government, that two tenements, named Macini and Vaticano, had, by the effect of the earthquake, changed their situation. In this fact Sir William agrees, and he accounts for it in the following manner. They were situated in a valley surrounded by high grounds, and the surface of the earth which had been removed, had probably been long undermined by the little rivulets which flow from the mountains, and which were in full view on the bare spot the tenements had deserted. He conjectures besides, that, the earthquake having opened some depositions of rain-water in the clayey hills which surrounded the valley, the water, mixing with the loose soil, and taking its course suddenly through the undermined surface, had lifted it up, together with the large olive and mulberry trees, and a thatched cottage, floating the entire piece of ground, with all its vegetation, about a mile down the valley, where he saw it, with most of the trees erect. These two tenements occupied a space of ground about a mile in length, and half a mile in breadth. There were in the vicinity several deep cracks in the earth, not one of which was then more than a foot in breadth; but Sir William was credibly assured, that, during the earthquake, one had opened wide, and had swallowed up an ox and nearly a hundred goats. In this valley he saw hollows, in the form of inverted cones, from which water and sand had been ejected violently at the time of the earthquakes, similar to those which had been pointed out to him at Rosarno. As well at the latter place, as in every ruined town he visited, an interesting remark was made to him, namely, that the male dead were generally found under the ruins, in the attitude of struggling against the danger; but that the attitude of the females was usually with the hands clasped over the head, as if giving themselves up to despair, unless they had children near them: in this case they were always found clasping them in their arms, or in some attitude which indicated their anxious care to protect them. How striking an instance of maternal tenderness!

Sir William traveled four days in the plain, in the midst of indescribable misery. Such was the force of the first shock, on the fifth of February, that the inhabitants of the towns were buried in an instant beneath the ruins of their houses. Of the population of the town of Polistene, which was badly situated between two rivers, wont to overflow their banks, twenty-one hundred individuals perished out of six thousand. It was built near a ravine of great depth; and, by the violent motion of the earth, two huge portions of the ground on which a considerable part of the town, consisting of several hundreds of houses, stood, were detached into the ravine, and nearly across it, to the distance of about half a mile from their original position. What was most extraordinary, many of the inhabitants of these houses, who had taken this singular leap in them, were dug out alive, and several unhurt. Terra Nuova lost three-fourths of a population of sixteen hundred inhabitants; and near to this town and to the ravine, many acres of land covered with trees and corn-fields had been detached and thrown into the latter, often without having been overturned, insomuch that the trees and crops were growing as well as if they had been planted there. Other such pieces of ground were lying in the bottom, in an inclined situation; and others, again, were quite overturned. Two immense portions of land, having been detached opposite to each other, filled the valley, and stopped the course of the river, the waters of which formed a great lake.

Having walked over the ruins of Oppido, Sir William descended into the ravine, which he carefully examined. Here he saw the wonderful force of the earthquake, which had produced exactly the same effects as in the ravine of Terra Nuova, but on a scale infinitely greater. The enormous masses of the plain, detached from each side of the ravine, lay in confused heaps, forming real mountains; and, having stopped the course of two rivers, great lakes were formed. He occasionally met with a detached piece of the surface of the plain, many acres in extent, with the large oaks and olive-trees, having lupines and corn beneath them, growing as well, and in as good order at the bottom of the ravine, as their companions from which they had been separated, were in the plain, at least five hundred feet higher, and at the distance of about three-quarters of a mile. Entire vineyards, which had taken a similar journey, were in the same order in the bottom. In another part of the ravine was a mountain, composed of a clayey soil, which was probably a portion of the plain, detached by an earthquake at some former period: it was in hight about two hundred and fifty feet, and about four hundred feet in diameter at its basis. It was well attested, Sir William observes, that this mountain traveled down the ravine nearly four miles, having been put in motion by the first shock. The abundance of rain which fell at that time; the great weight of the newly detached pieces of the plain, which were heaped up at its back; the nature of its soil; and particularly its situation on a declivity: these, in his opinion, satisfactorily account for this phenomenon. The Prince of Cariati showed him two girls, one of the age of about sixteen years, who had remained eleven days without food under the ruins of a house in Oppido; and the other, about eleven years of age, who had been under the same circumstances six days, but in a very confined and distressing posture.

Sir William describes the port of Messina, and the town, in their half-ruined state, when viewed by moonlight, as strikingly picturesque. On landing, he was assured by several fishermen, that, during the earthquake of the fifth of February, at night the sand near the sea was hot, and that in many parts they saw fire issue from the earth. This had been often repeated to him in the Calabrian plain; and the idea he entertained was, that the exhalations which issued during the violent commotions of the earth, were full of electric fire, just as the smoke of volcanoes is constantly observed to be during violent eruptions; for he did not, during any part of his tour, perceive an indication of volcanic matter having issued from the fissures of the earth. He was, therefore, convinced that the whole damage had been done by exhalations and vapors only. In this city, where they had so long an experience of earthquakes, he was told, that all animals and birds are, in a greater or less degree, more sensible of an approaching shock of an earthquake than any human being; but that geese, above all, were the soonest and the most alarmed at the approach of a shock: if in the water, they quit it immediately, and they can not be driven into it for some time after.

The force of the earthquakes, although very violent at Messina, and at Reggio, on the opposite side of the strait, was not to be compared to that which was felt in the plain. In the former city the mortality did not exceed seven hundred, of a population of thirty thousand. A curious circumstance happened there also, to prove that animals can sustain life for a long time without food. Two mules belonging to the Duke of Belviso, remained under a heap of ruins, the one twenty-two, and the other twenty-three days: for some days after they refused their food, but drank plentifully, and finally recovered. There were numberless instances of dogs remaining many days in the same situation; and a hen, belonging to the British vice-consul, having been closely shut up beneath the ruins of his house, was taken out on the twenty-second day, and recovered, although at first it showed but little signs of life: like the mules, it did not eat for some days, but drank freely. From these instances, and from those above related, of the girls at Oppido, and the hogs at Soriano, as well as from several others of the same kind, it may be concluded, that long fasting is always attended with great thirst, and a total loss of appetite.

A circumstance worth recording, and which was observed throughout the whole coast of the part of the Calabrian provinces which had been most affected by the earthquakes, was, that a description of small fishes, named cicirelli, resembling what in England are called white-bait, but larger, and which usually lie at the bottom of the sea, buried in the sand, were, from the commencement of these earthquakes, and for a considerable time after, taken near the surface, and in such abundance as to become the common food of the poorer sort of people; whereas, before these events, they were rare, and reckoned among the greatest delicacies. Fishes in general having been taken, wherever the effects of the shocks had reached, in much greater abundance, and with greater facility than before, Sir William conjectures, either that the bottom of the sea may have been heated by the volcanic fire beneath it, or that the continual tremor of the earth had driven the fishes out of their strongholds, in the same way as an angler, when he wants a bait, obliges the worms to come out of a turf on the river-side, by trampling on it with his feet, which motion never fails of its effect.