Another myth attributes the earthquake to the restlessness of the serpent Midgard, who encircles the universe, his tail in his mouth. Also, the wolf Fenrir, who is to take part in the final contest that produces Ragnarok, is supposed to have occasional differences of opinion before the time with certain of the fire giants. The earth is then liable to be shaken.
Natives of the Tonga group, in the South Pacific, believed that their hero-god, Maui, upheld the world on his breast. When he became restless and shook the earth, they would rush out and beat the ground with sticks to make him lie still.
From traditions concerning Mohammed we learn that the circular earth lies in the midst of a vast sea, and is encircled by an immense whale, upon whose back 700,000 gigantic bulls walk up and down. Said whale swims about the earth very cautiously, but occasionally jostles it slightly. On the night when Mohammed was born this noble animal was so agitated with joy, that had not the Lord restrained him, he would assuredly have overturned the earth.
The Sandwich Islanders believed that the goddess Pele, who dwelt in the great volcano of Kilauea, was displeased with the conduct of man; she proceeded to admonish him of her power, by shaking him out of bed in the night, or tumbling his house about his ears. If especially angry, she set her volcanic home to fuming and firing.
So-called scientific theories on various topics have in time past been little more respectable, and need not be given any detailed attention. The pious gentry who deemed Roger Bacon a wizard and Columbus and Galileo heretics, would have listened with horror to any effort to explain the phenomena of earthquakes as anything else than a direct manifestation of the wrath of God. Researches in any branch of natural science met with decided discouragement in Christendom during the dark and middle ages; and the goddess of wisdom found a decidedly more congenial atmosphere at Moorish and Saracen courts.
Hence the modern science of seismology, as the investigations of earthquakes are called, is comparatively in its infancy. Yet the subject of seismic phenomena has been of interest to the thoughtful from a very early period, earthquakes being of far greater frequency than most persons suppose. Some of the earliest philosophers ventured opinions on the topic; for the records of earthquakes, more distinctly than those of volcanoes, go back to the earliest times.
We find Aristotle, in his treatise on natural events, rejecting the explanations of three other philosophers as untenable, and propounding a theory of his own. Anaximenes, of Miletus, suggested the drying and moistening of the earth occasioned irregular contraction and expansion, and from the cracking and readjusting shocks resulted. Democritus, of Abdera, shook his earth by means of vast subterranean bodies of water which some force compelled to move from one cavity to another. Doubtless the peculiar wave-like motion of the earth in many earthquakes suggested his theory. Anaxagoras, of Clazomenae, believed that ether—by which the old Greeks seem to mean air—was confined in underground cavities, and in its efforts to escape upward produced the vibration of the earth. Aristotle substitutes for the disturbing agent wind, which has flowed into fissures and caverns and is endeavoring to flow out again. Virgil and Pliny stand by the old Greek; and it is quite probable that Shakespeare acquired his idea from one of the three. And these, with Anaxagoras, are but little out of the way; for as seen in the discussion of volcanic action, the explosive or disturbing agent is generally steam, though other gases are present in large quantities.
We have already noticed that earthquakes and volcanoes are produced by the same causes; but as the myths of many nations do not connect the two, it is evident that such people did not recognize their essential identity.
But after knowing they are but variations in results, we cannot so readily explain the reason of the variations. Certain facts are well established; and from these common premises widely different conclusions have been deduced.
We know to-day that in active volcanic regions, an earthquake almost invariably precedes an eruption; and a violent one has never, within the historic period, followed an eruption. So the most reasonable inference is, that the earthquake merely betokens the presence of a vast quantity of imprisoned vapor which has not found an outlet; and that so soon as a volcanic vent is found, the pressure is relieved, and the earthquake subsides.
But this leaves us just where the theorists of volcanic agency have stopped. The question of the sudden formation of volumes of gases in sufficient quantities to produce such terrible effects is to be solved.
Mr. Mallet, who is one of the best authorities on the subject, considers that submarine eruptions must account for them. A volcanic upheaval of the sea bottom would produce crevices, by which the sea is brought directly in contact with subterranean fires. An explosion is the result, like those that have occasionally occurred at foundries from dumping masses of fiery slag into a snowbank. So what began with a gradual upheaval ends with a sudden concussion, the vibration of which passes along the sea bottom to the mainland. Every one who has lived in the city is familiar with the fact that the vibration produced by a carriage may be felt at the top of a very tall building.
But the idea that the explosion always occurs at the sea bottom leaves no way to account for the fact that a volcanic eruption acts as a safety-valve. Mr. Mallet’s conclusions are largely based on personal observations of earthquakes in England, where no active volcano exists.
That earthquakes are more violent and volcanoes more numerous on islands or near the sea coast is well-known. It is also well established that shocks frequently occur at sea, which are not perceptible on the land. The shock is similar to that produced by striking on a reef. Often have sailors been mystified, on receiving such shocks and hastily heaving the lead, to find the ocean unfathomable. Again, shocks which are most violent on land are not perceptible at sea, unless a great sea wave be produced; but such a wave in the open sea, as often experienced, produces no shock but passes under a vessel like a heavy swell. And a shock at sea is sometimes severe enough to snap a spar, or wrench loose bolts like the blow of a reef, yet no trace is perceptible on shore. Lastly, earthquakes often happen in inland regions, and affect but a small area. Clearly it will not do to attribute effects so different to explosions at the sea-bottom.
Those who attribute all earthquakes to subterranean heat and gases, whether local or general, find it easy to account for the occurrence of violent earthquakes in regions remote from active volcanoes. In case of the gradual decline of volcanic action, such as we know from the great numbers of extinct volcanoes, old trap-dykes, and ancient lava beds, to be continually taking place in one region or another, the old vents or safety-valves would cool and close. The pent up power would in consequence gradually accumulate, till finding no outlet, it would burst the crust over a wide area, and so relieve the pressure.
This finds further confirmation in the fact that the noted non-volcanic regions which are seriously shaken are all coincident with or adjacent to regions of extinct fires; while in such regions as are very seldom shaken, such as Germany, portions of North America, Brazil, the eastern slope of the Andes, the traces of such agency are less common, or of older date. Noted regions of volcanic action of comparatively recent extinction are Asia Minor, Turkey, Spain, Southern France and Greece. These, belted together by the active regions of Western Asia, the peninsula of Arabia, the Mediterranean, and Azores and Canaries, form a region which has suffered from earthquakes as much as, if not more than, any other tract upon the globe.
Those who have been puzzled by the appearance of earthquakes some distance from any actively volcanic region, have endeavored to divide earthquakes into two classes, which they have called volcanic and plutonic. This second class they have considered as originating, like the other, in the depths of the earth; but have endeavored to account for them by supposing them to be occasioned by the falling in of great caverns at a considerable depth. This theory has found a fair objection in the fact that in such cases an earthquake should always be a sinking of the ground: while the wrecking power and peculiarities of some earthquakes indicate a decided upward concussion as the first of shocks; and at the seashore, where any change in level is at once detected, upheaval is quite as common as subsidence.
Much speculation has been spent upon the fact of an earthquake being very severe in two or three different localities, but being imperceptible or very mild in intervening places. In South America it has become so common a peculiarity that the natives speak of such localities as “bridging” the earthquakes. Not improbably the reason is the same that produces calm when two waves interfere, crest to trough; the motions destroy each other. It may be also that the character of the underlying rocks has much to do with such cases. Experiments with explosions in mines show that vibrations of the soil travel over three hundred yards per second through sand beds, or about as rapidly as in the air; over five hundred yards in granite; while through iron they travel over three thousand eight hundred and fifty yards per second. So a vibration extremely destructive to a region underlaid by massive rocks might be comparatively harmless to a town on a sand-bed or mud-bank. Observations on earthquakes themselves have shown great variation in the rate of speed. The earthquake of Germany of 1846 moved four hundred and ninety-two yards per second; while the earthquake of Viege in 1855 traveled nine hundred and sixty yards a second toward Strasburg, but only half that speed towards Turin. So, also, the Lisbon earthquake traveled three times as rapidly around the coast as down the Rhine valley. So it must be that certain regions owe their comparative immunity from earthquakes to the nature of the ground beneath.
One or two ingenious savants have suggested that the earth is a vast thermo-electric pile, and that disturbances in the electrical equilibrium of the earth are the cause of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. But as already seen, the electrical phenomena of volcanic eruptions are fairly considered an effect, and not a cause, of the eruptions, as the hydro-electric machine illustrates. In the theory of these men, the molten veins of the interior represent conductors which are too small or imperfect to allow the electricity to pass freely, and are fused in consequence. One of these men, Steffens, alleges that such phenomena can only occur where large veins of coal exist, because large masses of carbon would be necessary to keep up a strong electric tension in the interior. Herr Steffens must account for the fact that the great coal regions of the world have been peculiarly favored in their comparative immunity from shocks.
Still others have advocated the idea that atmospheric whirlwinds and cyclones produce earthquakes. While not a few shocks have been accompanied by violent storms, the exception seems to be the rule. And in the case of storms, we have seen that the outpour of heat and vapor in a volcanic eruption would necessarily produce one. As concerns the winds that have accompanied earthquakes, they have as often come after the shock as before.
But these bring up certain phenomena that must be noticed. It is not easy to say how great is the connection between electrical and atmospheric disturbances, and the shiverings of the earth; but that there is some peculiar bond between them has been thought indisputable. It is only in the present century that scientists have carefully conned this matter, and generally rejected the belief. But the opinion is very ancient, and has a strong hold upon the people. It is generally adhered to by South Americans, Italians, West Indians, Japanese, and the inhabitants of Central Asia. Kamtschatkans, Kurile Islanders and Japanese, assert shocks are most frequent at the equinoxes. In equatorial America, the natives say an earthquake is preceded by drought, and is the precursor of rain. In the Dauphiny Alps, the people regard earthquakes as the result of avalanches; and the latter are readily started by the slightest atmospheric disturbances. In Central America the equinoctial idea prevails.
These things set the wise men to investigating. Much to their surprise, they began to discover that the idea of connection between the seasons and shocks seemed well-grounded. In 1834 Professor Merian announced that of one hundred and eighteen earthquakes at Basle, the majority had occurred in the winter. Volger made a list of twelve hundred and thirty shocks in the Alps; seven hundred and seventy-four occurred in autumn and winter. December showed one hundred and sixty-eight; July forty. Of ninety-eight quite severe shocks, but one had occurred in the summer. Of five hundred and thirty-nine earthquakes in the Rhine basin, one hundred and three occurred in the spring, one hundred and one in the summer, one hundred and sixty-five in the autumn, one hundred and seventy in winter. Observations in the Antilles show a slight predominance of autumn and winter.
Another peculiar fact is that most shocks seem to occur at night. Out of four hundred and seventy-two earthquakes in 1855-56, whose time was exactly noted, but one hundred and seventy-two happened in the day. Of those at night, three-fifths were during the latter half, forty-four being between one and two o’clock. Squier has told us that during several years residence in Central America, nearly all shocks occurred at night; also, that he experienced none save at the change of seasons. Hence, one is almost compelled to conclude that, while the primal cause of earthquakes must exist in the depths of the earth, yet external and climatic influences are strong modifiers.
Some other peculiarities are adduced to show the connection between atmospheric disturbances and earthquakes. In Central and Tropical America the temperature is said to fall after any shock. After the earthquake at Lechsand, Sweden, in 1856, the temperature fell eighty-six degrees. The same shock was violent as far as Smyrna in Asia Minor, where the thermometer fell at once twenty-nine degrees, the night being the coldest of the winter. Many similar cases are mentioned. But in view of the fact that one hundred times as many sudden and marked changes of temperature occur every year in various localities without the intervention of an earthquake, it seems difficult to regard the above instances as more than mere coincidences. The greatest fall in temperature the writer ever experienced occurred within three hours of a transit of Venus; but one swallow—nor a flock of them—cannot make a summer.
Barometric observations have been dragged into the combat. The great Lisbon earthquake, and the convulsion in Calabria, were preceded by low barometer. Similar observations have been made in this century. The constantly recurring shocks of 1855-56 were in each case preceded by fall of barometers. But Humboldt, in South America, and Ehrmann, in Central America, were unable to find such order; though the shocks were so invariably followed by such changes that unusual earthquakes were believed by the natives (as is also believed in India) to advance the rainy season. The resultant electric phenomena might produce this expedition.
But in this field all at present is mere guess work. The exceptions to any association of earthquake and storm are so far the rule; except in case of a volcanic eruption also occurring. In the latter case a storm invariably follows, so far as present observations go; but then the storm is not co-extensive with the earthquake, but is usually confined to the neighborhood of the volcano.
It should be noticed that certain scientists have endeavored to prove these convulsions are due to planetary influence. It does not appear that they have been able to find the least trace of any connection between the earth’s convulsions and the planets; but some affirm the existence of an earthquake cycle coincident with the Saros of the moon. Effort is also made to connect earthquakes and volcanoes with the gigantic convulsions of the sun, known as “sun spots.” It is argued by certain advocates of the molten interior that the attraction of the sun and moon produces an interior tidal wave, like that of the sea; and any irregularities in this produce the phenomena of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Objections to the molten interior have been already noted; and in regard to the other suggestions, so long as the great convulsions are peculiarly prevalent in certain regions, so long it will be necessary to seek their chief cause or most powerful modifiers in entirely local influences.
In conclusion, it does not yet seem clear that we can rely absolutely upon a single cause as productive of all the convulsions of the earth’s crust. Internal local heat, pent up gases, suffice for volcanic phenomena; but earthquakes present so many peculiar variations that it seems almost imperative to many men to admit, at least, the modifying influence of other agencies. But so long as these agencies appear to be quite as frequently the modified as the modifier, no laws concerning them can be announced. Hence, internal conditions are the only clearly identified factors so far.
There is quite as much difference of opinion as to how far beneath the surface the shocks originate. Robert Mallet’s investigations have led him to believe the depth cannot be over thirty miles, and that seven or eight miles is the limit for most, and his views are those of most scientists. But a few others conclude that we cannot find molten matter and gases to produce the concussion at a less depth than seventy-eight miles. But, as their conclusions are based largely upon the idea that the melting point of minerals is raised uniformly with increasing pressure, their conclusions must be rejected as unreliable.
The character of the motion is well known. Each point of the surface begins to move with the vibration first upwards, then away from the center of shock, then downward and backwards. Thus, each point describes a small ellipse, which is repeated with each wave of vibration. If the longer axis of the ellipse be vertical, the main force of the concussion is directed upwards; if the shorter one be upright, the shock is an undulatory one. An alternation of the two forms the most destructive combination. The difference is readily perceived in the effects produced. A sudden upward shock may wreck the roofs or floors of buildings, while an undulatory one brings down the walls.
Houses erected on sand, immediately overlaying compact rock, usually suffer most during earthquakes. The effect is that of the vibration of a sheet of glass covered with sand. But, if a second sheet of glass be placed on that, the vibration is hardly communicated to it at all. So, while sand is a bad foundation, a sand-bed beneath the surface seems to deaden the shock.
It is not difficult to understand that lofty buildings, and those of stone or brick, must be vastly more dangerous than those of wood, and low and broad. Throughout many portions of Central and South America, the people endeavor to compromise, by building houses of stone, but low and massive, with very light roofs. These are far less safe than light structures of wood; also, it is clear that cupolas and towers must be peculiarly liable to injury. For this reason, churches have often suffered more from shocks than other buildings, and the throngs of penitents who flock to them in the hope of propitiating an offended providence are often the first victims of an earthquake.
“It is to earthquakes, rather than to barbarians, from the fifth to the ninth century, that Rome owed the loss of so many superb palaces and temples. One might imagine that in these great disasters, the architect is the ally of the subterranean scourge. The Indian’s hut and the Arab’s tent, may be overturned without any great loss or injury to their owners; but the marble of the patrician crushes him as it falls, and the inhabitants of a great city meet their death under the ruins of their sumptuous buildings. The Peruvians of old were not far wrong in making merry at the folly of their Spanish conquerors, who, in erecting great buildings upon a soil so constantly agitated, were preparing, at great expense, their own tombs.”
It will be shown, by and by, how the motions of earthquakes are becoming so carefully noted that their path can be pointed out beforehand. Ere many years are past, the prediction of earthquakes may become as important a feature of the Signal Service Department, as the foretelling of storms.
RECORDS and myths of great earthquakes go back almost to prehistoric times. The Greeks tell of an immense flood—perhaps a sea wave—which overwhelmed Attica immediately after an earthquake in the nineteenth century before Christ. It is known as the deluge of Ogyges, from the name of the reigning king. Some three centuries later is the story of a great earthquake and flood in Thessaly, from which Deucalion and Pyrrha escaped. There is a still vaguer legend of an immense earthquake about 2400 B. C., that shook all Southern Europe, and Asia Minor, opening an outlet for the Black Sea, which had before been entirely inland. In the convulsion of the seas, we are told almost all the people of Greece and Asia Minor perished. Chinese traditions and monuments tell of an immense earthquake at the same period, which suddenly raised the bottom of the great Northern Sea, pouring its waters out upon all North China and drowning the people. Where the great sea once was is now the great Mongolian Desert.
Likewise the Egyptian priests told Plato of a great island, Atlantis, lying off the coast of North Africa, stretching an unknown distance to the west; the home of a mighty nation that ruled all the western world, to the shores of the Mediterranean, and threatened the liberty of the European world. It is said that they made war on the combined forces of Greece and Egypt; and in the crisis of the struggle a fearful earthquake swallowed up the Grecian soldiery in a single night, and sunk Atlantis in the ocean since called from its name, Atlantic.
Doubtless all these traditions relate to the same terrible catastrophe described in Genesis. The Chinese even tell us in what way the “fountains of the great deep were broken up.” It would seem that a great sea once extended northeastward from the present basin of the Caspian over the deserts of Central Asia; and that an awful upheaval of this basin was the chief factor in the flood. Isthmuses were torn asunder: vast oceans hurled their gigantic waves over the continents, and over islands engulfed forever. The extraordinary evaporation from the unusual expanse of water, the sudden chilling of the atmosphere, produced torrents of rain. “The same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.” Whatever be the truth of the traditions, it is certain they preserve the memory of a catastrophe unparalleled in recent days.
Of a later date, there is the story that the Ciminian and Alban lakes near Rome were created by a terrible earthquake; but the date of this event is not very definite. The Japanese tell us that the great volcano, Fujiyama, was thrown up in a single night, and at the same time the lake in Oomi was created, near by, on the site of a number of flourishing villages.
Occasionally an earthquake has brought about a historic crisis. In the year 464 B. C., “in the fourth year of the reign of Archidamus, there happened the most dreadful earthquake in Sparta that had ever been known. In several places the country was entirely swallowed up: Täygetus and other mountains were shaken to their foundations; many of their summits, being torn away, came tumbling down; and the whole city was laid in ruins, five houses only excepted. To heighten the calamity, the Helots, who were slaves to the Lacedemonians, looking upon this as a favorable opportunity to recover their liberty, pervaded every part of the city, to murder such as had escaped the earthquake; but finding them under arms, and drawn up in order of battle, by the prudent foresight of Archidamus, who had assembled them around him, they retired into the neighboring cities, and commenced that day open war, having entered into an alliance with several of the neighboring nations, and being strengthened by the Messenians, who at that time were engaged in war with the Spartans.” But for the timely aid of others, Sparta might have been overthrown. The most striking feature is the astonishing coolness and presence of mind of the Spartans in the face of such a dire calamity.
This is, perhaps, the earliest earthquake of which careful historic mention is made. But from that time, the record thickens rapidly. In the year 373 B. C., a great shock did fearful damage throughout all Greece, destroying thousands of lives and damaging millions of dollars worth of property in a single night. The inhabitants of the Peloponnesus, roused by the convulsion, waited in fear for the morning. Dawn showed that the two beautiful cities of Bura and Helice were no more. The sea rolled above. Long after, on calm, clear days, Helice, once an inland town, could be seen at the bottom of the Corinthian Gulf; silent and beautiful in its ruin, marble temples and shattered homes presenting a literal “city of the dead.”
The year B. C. 217 found Rome and Carthage locked in deadly combat. While Hannibal and Flaminius fought by Thrasymene, earth felt the throes of war, and shook Italian cities down, while lakes and streams were tumbled from their beds. North Africa suffered, perhaps, the greatest shaking recorded in her history; one hundred towns were lost, and tens of thousands of people perished.
In A. D. 17 thirteen cities of Asia Minor were thrown to the ground. The Emperor Tiberius rebuilt them at his own expense. The grateful people presented him with a magnificent pedestal, which he had placed in the forum at Pozzuoli.
A. D. 27 Egypt was shaken, and the great statue of Memnon overthrown. In A. D. 63 came a great earthquake in Central Italy.
The earthquake in A. D. 33, at the time of the crucifixion, was felt throughout Asia Minor, Greece, Sicily and Southern Italy. In the Syria corpses were tumbled from their rock-hewn tombs. The town of Nicaea, in Bithynia, was totally destroyed. How many perished in this widespread shock is not known. Tradition has it that a fissure in a great rock, which overhangs the shore at Gaeta, was made by this earthquake. Till quite recently passing vessels were wont to salute the rock in commemoration of the great event.
No city has suffered from these terrible throes of Mother Earth as much as Antioch. In the year 115, the Emperor Trajan, extending his territories to the wilder regions of the Caucasus, was in the city with his army. There came heavy thunders, great winds, fearful subterranean rumblings; the earth shook; down tottered temples, towns, palaces, colonnades, statues, homes and huts, in irretrievable ruin. The Emperor sprang from a window and ran for his life, like a peasant, through the streets resounding with the groans and cries of the unfortunates buried in the ruins. Mountains were rent asunder, rivers turned from their courses, new streams were created, old valleys disappeared. Eighty thousand people are believed to have perished at Antioch alone.
In A. D. 365 a fearful earthquake was felt throughout the entire Mediterranean region. The sea rolled back, leaving fishes and vessels high and dry; then, suddenly returning, it carried large boats two miles inland. Fifty thousand people were lost at Alexandria. Shortly before, a number of towns in Palestine had been destroyed. This second great disaster shook all Asia Minor. In every town men began to talk, with bated breath, of the fearful wrath the Lord manifested because of those who had lent a willing ear to heretical doctrines. “This was why only the priests and holy men of the church could appease the Divine wrath; and if the town of Epidaurus had escaped the ruin which befell all the other towns along the coast, it was because the inhabitants had taken the statue of St. Hilary to the sea-shore. The Saint made the sign of the cross, and the mountain of water, bending low before him, forthwith receded.” Whence, it seems the Lord was supposed to have greater regard for crooked saintly fingers than for heretical doctrines. Numerous were the direful prodigies said to have accompanied this fearful shock.
The next century brought calamities once more upon Asia Minor. A series of tremendous shocks were felt in 458, wrecking many of the finest cities. The renowned Antioch, rebuilt in its pristine splendor, was once more humbled in the dust. Eighty thousand people perished within its walls; many thousands more in the adjacent regions. Probably one hundred and twenty-five thousand in all were slain in this earthquake.
Years passed by, bringing, from time to time, minor shocks which destroyed hundreds in different locations, but which passed with but little notice amid so many greater disasters, and wars and rumors of wars. Antioch had been gradually rebuilt, and was more splendid than ever before. The first quarter of the sixth century was past. The time of the great festival of the Ascension was at hand, A. D. 526. From all the country round came people flocking to the celebration, to witness the pageantry and procession. Without a moment’s warning, a great earthquake came, as fearful as the shock four hundred and eleven years before. The destruction was vastly greater. The tottering walls crushed thousands in the crowded streets. Every avenue and alley became a death-trap. There is not, in all the pages of history, record of an earthquake of greater destructiveness. Gibbon estimates the number of victims at two hundred and fifty thousand.
Nor was Antioch the only sufferer. The number of victims at other points in Asia Minor might be fifty thousand more. The whole sixth century is noted for the unusual number of appalling disasters of this sort which occurred at different places in the then known world. Probably a million people perished during this period in earthquakes alone. Such unwonted havoc may well cause us to wonder what manner of convulsions were occurring in the great volcanic regions of the Pacific and the then unknown western world. If the same general rule prevailed then that has been noticeable in more recent periods; if great convulsions were then, as now, comparatively synchronous, it would be difficult to form any adequate idea of the magnitude of the disturbances.
In 742 there was a tremendous earthquake in Egypt and Arabia, which overturned scores of cities and villages, rent mountains asunder, buried people in the wrecks of their dwellings, tossed the sea to and fro, swallowed up towns, wiped out thriving seaports, and numbered its dead by many tens of thousands. Four years later Jerusalem and all Syria experienced a dreadful shock, which made terrible havoc. In 823, Central Europe was shaken and Aix-la-chapelle nearly destroyed. In 860 Persia and Syria were again shaken; and in 867, Antioch, after its three centuries of comparative rest, was again ravaged by the destroyer. This shock extended to Mecca, which was fearfully rent. Part of a mountain in Syria was hurled into the sea. The century closed with a fearful convulsion in far distant India, wherein no less than one hundred and eighty thousand people were killed. Western Syria suffered again in 1169 and 1202. All the cities of the Mediterranean coast were shaken to pieces, with the usual terrible loss of life. The valleys of the Lebanon district were upheaved and altered throughout their whole extent.
Shock after shock came in the succeeding decades. One of these destroyed forty thousand persons at Bagdad alone. In 1759, the long list of catastrophes in Asia Minor was increased by one of the most terrible on record. At the first shock the proud Antioch was once more totally destroyed. Within the next forty-five days Baalbec, Sidon, Acre, Foussa, Nazareth, Safit, Tripoli, and scores of lesser towns and villages were almost blotted out. The horrors of that period are too awful for description. Even more fearful, if possible, was the earthquake of 1822, which once more made Antioch a shapeless mass of ruins. Aleppo, Djollib, Riha, Gisser, Chugra, Dieskrich, and Armenas shared a like fate. In the whole pashalic of Aleppo not a house or hut was left standing. Several severe earthquakes have followed during the century. In one, we are told the force of the shocks was so peculiar and powerful that in some places stone walls were converted to heaps of dust or lime.
This record, which is but a partial one, is enough to explain the utterly ruined condition of Baalbec, Palmyra, and many other relics of ancient grandeur. They have contended with a force more terrible than ever was shot or shell of the cannonier. Thousands are familiar with the views of such massive columns and walls of the Temple of Jupiter as are still standing, eighty-four feet high from base to capital. The marvel is, that after such a succession of fearful quakings there is the slightest semblance of their former condition remaining.
Terrible as these calamities are, not a great deal beyond the bare fact is known of many of them. To learn more exactly the dreadful capabilities of this stupendous agent, it is necessary to examine European and South American earthquakes that have come directly under the observation of scientific men. From these we may learn more particularly of the details of various fearful shocks.
In all Italy, so famed for its warmth and beauty, there is not a more lovely district than Calabria, which lies in the Southern portion of the peninsula. Yet no part of Italy has suffered such great calamities. An earthquake in 1693 shook the whole of Calabria and Sicily, totally destroying sixty towns and villages, and not fewer than one hundred thousand people. Eighteen thousand perished at Catania alone. Forty-eight years later a violent earthquake shattered one hundred and ninety towns in Calabria and completely swallowed up Eufemia, leaving only a stinking lake. But these were before the day of minute scientific observation.
In 1783, a series of shocks, unequalled in recent years in violence, began in Calabria and continued through four years. The scene was visited and carefully examined by several able men, and from their accounts a fine conception of the whole may be obtained.
The subterranean concussions were felt beyond the confines of Sicily; but if the city of Oppido, in Calabria, be taken as the center, a circle around it, whose radius is twenty-two miles, would include the space which suffered the greatest calamities. Within this circle all the towns and villages were almost entirely destroyed. A radius of seventy-two miles would include the whole region affected.
It was a calm, hazy day in February, 1783. At a
quarter to one o’clock was felt the first shock, which “threw down, in the space of two minutes, a greater part of the houses within the whole space above described. The convulsive motion of the earth is said to have resembled the rolling of the sea, and that in many instances it produced swimming of the head, like sea-sickness. This rolling of the surface, like the billows of the sea, was like that which would have been produced by the agitation of a vast mass of liquid matter under the ground.
In some walls which were shattered, the separate stones were parted from the mortar, so as to leave an exact mold where they had rested, as though the stone had been carefully raised from its bed in a perpendicular direction; but in other instances the mortar was ground to powder between the stones, as though they had been made to revolve on each other.
It was found that the swelling, or wave-like motions, and those which were called vorticose, or whirling, often produced the most singular and unaccountable effects. Thus, in some streets in the town of Monteleone, every house was thrown down, except one, and in some other streets all but two or three;” and these were left uninjured, though differing in no respect from others. In some houses which were wrecked, deep foundations were thrown clear out of the ground, as though upheaved by a direct lifting. Sometimes very massive buildings escaped; sometimes they suffered most. Obelisks and pillars made in sections showed the effects of the vorticose motion. The separate portions were partly turned upon each other, without being thrown down.
The number and size of the fissures in the soil is astonishing. “In many instances, these fissures were so wide, as in an instant to swallow up men, trees, and even houses; and when the earth sunk down again, it closed upon them so entirely, as not to leave the least vestige of what had happened, nor were any signs of them ever discovered afterwards. In the vicinity of Oppido, the center of these convulsions, many houses were precipitated into the same great fissure, which immediately closed over them; and,
in the same neighborhood, four farm-houses, several oilstores and dwelling-houses were so entirely ingulfed that not a vestige of them was seen afterwards.
In some instances these chasms did not close. In one district a ravine, formed in this manner, a mile long, one hundred feet broad and thirty feet deep, remained open; and in another a similar one remained, three-quarters of a mile long, one hundred and fifty feet wide, and one hundred feet deep; in another instance there remained such a chasm, thirty feet wide and two hundred and twenty-five feet deep.” In another place a gulf three hundred feet square was left open; again, we are told of one seven hundred and fifty feet square. A calcareous mountain, Zefirio, was rent in twain for half a mile. Similar effects were observed in Sicily, where Messina was almost totally destroyed, and the ruins devoured by the flames. “In various places the ground sunk down, and lakes were formed, which, being fed by springs, have remained ever since. The convulsions also removed immense masses of earth from the sides of steep hills into the valleys below; so that, in many instances, oaks, olive-orchards, vineyards and cultivated fields, were seen growing at the bottoms of deep hollows, having been removed from the side hills of the vicinity. In one instance, a mass of earth two hundred feet thick and four hundred feet in diameter, being set in motion by one of the first shocks, traveled four miles into the valley below.
The violence of the upward motion of the ground was singularly illustrated by the inversion of heavy bodies lying on the surface, and which can hardly be accounted for, except on the supposition that they were actually thrown to a considerable distance into the air. Thus, in some towns, a considerable portion of the flat pavingstones were found with their lower sides uppermost. Mr.
Lyell accounts for this effect by supposing that the stones were propelled upwards by the momentum which they had acquired, and the adhesion of one end of the mass being greater than the other, a rotary motion had been communicated to them. It is difficult to conceive how a whirling motion, so rapid as to produce such an effect, could have been communicated to a whole town without producing some consequences still more extraordinary.”
In many places in the plain of Rosarno, funnel-shaped pits were formed, with crevices radiating in every direction like fractures in a pane of glass. These were partially filled with sand and water.
Polistena was so absolutely wrecked that not the least semblance of the plan of the town could be detected. Terranova was precipitated, with its fourteen hundred inhabitants, three hundred and twenty-five feet into a deep gorge, and turned upside down. Moluquello, on an opposite hill between two streams, was rent in twain—one-half fell into the stream on the right, the other on the left. There was left a ridge so narrow at the top one could not keep his balance on it. Santa Cristena was hurled from the top of a sandy hill into the valley beneath. Out of three hundred and seventy-five towns and villages, three hundred and twenty were destroyed. Two hundred and fifteen lakes and morasses were created by displacements of the ground and blocking of water-courses. The pestilence bred by these vied with the direct power of the earthquake.
Some slight disturbance was manifested on the day before the great shock. Prince Scylla, an old man, warned his people to take to their boats, and himself set the example. When the first shock came, many of these people were sleeping in their boats near the shore, while the others were on the shore at a little place elevated above