“Ah, behold!” he cried, “they have just found Padre Antonio’s twin brother. He and his mother were the only ones saved of a family of fourteen.”
The priest, haggard and wild looking, with his arm in a sling, began to read aloud a prayer. His mother stood beside him, swaying backwards and forwards. As the prayer ended, the mother joining in the benediction, In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritûs Sancti; a newspaper reporter fixed his camera on a tripod and photographed the pathetic group. The rain, that had stopped for a moment, now came down again in torrents and drenched them all to the skin.
“It was raining like mad most of the time,” J. writes, “I can well understand how your poor old woman, Rosina, kept harping on the rain. Anything more dismal it is hard to imagine. I have only been made uncomfortable by it; but there are hundreds of poor people camping out wherever there is a clear space big enough to run up a primitive shelter with boards, if they have them, or sails rigged on poles. I saw one ambitious family roofing roughly with tiles they had collected from the streets. They seemed to be the first to make the attempt, though the streets are literally strewn with tiles. In these poor shelters, and in the miserable little tents (some of them about half big enough for a man to crawl into and lie down, and which do not reach the ground by about a foot and a half) the water had flooded everything. The suffering from this cruel rain that these poor souls endure must be cruel beyond words.”
Mr. Thompson writes under the same date:
“Worked early getting off the goods the Vice Consul had asked for. The Ambassador and the rest of the party, except Elliott and myself, went on shore; weather very wet and stormy. Lunched early and went on shore with Elliott, passing the ‘Connecticut’ with the Ambassador on board. Went to temporary Consulate and met Deputy Vice-Consul, Mr. Cutting, and the acting English Consul. Then Elliott and I went out to see the town, wearing our red crosses. The sights were terrible; we realize now what an earthquake means. We walked along the Marina, the former chief water-front street. It has in places sunk beneath the water level, and is full of huge cracks. Here and there we passed a house but little damaged, but nearly all have the roofs fallen in; and, curious to say, at short intervals are houses that have been utterly and entirely smashed for no particular reason that one could see. The American and British Consulates are a case in point. Italian soldiers were digging and the party from the ‘Culgoa’ working all day under the driving rain, looking in vain for the bodies of the American Consul and his wife. Constantly saw soldiers with spades passing along. The city is under martial law and we saw many soldiers on guard. A few people living in wooden shanties or among the ruins with the rain soaking in upon them. Made our way inland to the cathedral which looks, as far as one can judge, as though the façade must have been fine. The ruins of the cathedral are well guarded by soldiers, on account of the great treasure buried there. The streets around the duomo are so ruined that we climbed over debris level with the second and third floors. The presence of the dead was all too obvious at every few yards. It will take two or three years to clear what is left of the city, and I should think it was a hopeless task and that Messina must be abandoned. Some of the
MESSINA. A HOUSE THAT ESCAPED DESTRUCTION. [Page 129.]
REGGIO. SOLDIERS ON THEIR WAY TO A RESCUE. [Page 130.]
