Meals that were marvels were served in tumbledown little hotels. Most

famous of all the restaurants was the Poodle Dog. There have been no

less than four restaurants of this name, beginning with a frame shanty

where, in the early days, a prince of French cooks used to exchange

recipes for gold dust. Each succeeding restaurant of the name has moved

farther downtown; and the recent Poodle Dog stands--or stood--on the

edge of the Tenderloin in a modern five-story building. And it typified

a certain spirit that there was in San Francisco.

On the ground floor was a public restaurant where there was served the

best dollar dinner on earth. It ranked with the best and the others were

in San Francisco. Here, especially on Sunday night, almost everybody

went to vary the monotony of home cooking. Every one who was any one in

the town could be seen there off and on. It was perfectly respectable. A

man might take his wife and daughter there.

On the second floor there were private dining rooms, and to dine there,

with one or more of the opposite sex, was risque but not especially

terrible. But the third floor--and the fourth floor--and the fifth! The

elevator man of the Poodle Dog, who had held the job for many years and

never spoke unless spoken to, wore diamonds and was a heavy investor in

real estate.

There were others as famous in their way--Zinkaud’s, where, at one time,

every one went after the theatre, and Tate’s, which has lately bitten

into that trade; the Palace Grill, much like the grills of Eastern

hotels, except for the price; Delmonico’s, which ran the Poodle Dog neck

and neck in its own line, and many others, humbler, but great at the

price.

THE BOHEMIAN CLUB.

To the visitor who came to see the city and who put himself in the hands

of one of its well-to-do citizens for the purpose, the few days that

followed were apt to be a whirl of mirth and sight-seeing, made up of

breakfasts, luncheons, dinners, drives, little trips across the bay,

dashes down the peninsula to the polo and country clubs, hours spent

in Bohemia, trips around the world among all the races of the habitable

globe, all of whom had their colonies in this most cosmopolitan of

American cities.

In club life the Bohemian stood first and foremost, the famous club

whose meeting place, with all its art treasures, is now a heap of ashes,

but which was formerly ‘Frisco’s head-centre of mirth. Founded by Henry

George, the world-famous single tax advocate, when he was an impecunious

scribbler on the San Francisco Post, it grew to be the choicest place of

resort in the Pacific metropolis.

Within its walls the possession of dollars was a bar rather than an

“open sesame,” the master key to its circles being the knack of telling

a good story or the possession of quick and telling wit. Fun-making was

the rule there, and the only way to escape being made its victim was

the power to deliver a ready and witty retort. In this home of good

fellowship all the artists, actors, wits, literati, fiddlers, pianists

and bon vivants were members. Here an impoverished painter could square

his grill and buffet account by giving the club a daub to hang on its

walls. Here in days of old the Sheriff used to camp regularly once a

month until the members rustled up the money to replevin the furniture.

But these days of poverty passed away, and in later years the club came

to know prosperity beyond the dreams of the good fellows who founded it.

THE WICKEDEST AND GAYEST.

The Bohemian is gone, but the spirit that founded and made it still

exists, and we may look to see it rise, like the phoenix, from its

ashes.

San Francisco was often called the wickedest city in America. It was

hardly that, it was simply the gayest. It was not the home of purity;

neither is any other city. What other cities do behind closed doors San

Francisco did not hesitate to do in the open.

In Eastern cities the police have driven vice into tenements, lodging

houses and apartments. San Francisco did not do that. She had certain

quarters where, according to unwritten law, vice was allowed to abide,

and she did not try to hide the fact that it could be found there. She

was not secretly immoral; she was frankly unmoral.

She did not believe in driving her vice from the open where it could be

recognized and controlled--prevented from doing any more harm than it

was possible to stop--into districts of the city where good people dwell

and purity would feel its contaminating influence. There were regions in

which the respectable never set foot, haunts of acknowledged vice which

for virtue to enter would be to lose caste.

As for its gayety, San Francisco was proud of the reputation of being

the Paris of America. Its women were beautiful, and they knew it. They

liked to adorn their beauty with fine clothes and peacock along the

streets on matinee days. If you asked a San Francisco girl why she wore

such expensive clothes, she would say, frankly, “Because I like to have

the men admire me,” and she would see no harm in saying it. There was

very little sham about the San Francisco women. Their men understood

them and worshiped them. They bore themselves with the freedom that

was theirs by right of their heritage of open-air living, the Bohemian

atmosphere they breathed, the unconventional character of their

surroundings. Their figures were strong and well moulded, their faces

bloomed with health like the roses in their gardens. They drew the wine

of laughter from their balmy California air. Sorrow and trouble sat

lightly on their shoulders.

There was no end of enjoyments. After the theatre they would go to

Zinkaud’s, Tate’s, the Palace or some other of the many places of

resort, for a snack to eat and a spell under the music, which was to be

heard everywhere.

Another part of the gay life of the city was for a private dance to keep

going all night in a fashionable residence, and at daylight, instead of

everybody going to bed, to jump into automobiles or carriages or take

the trolley cars and whizz off to the beach for a dip in the cold salt

water pool at Sutro’s baths, and then, with ravenous appetites, sit down

on the Cliff House balcony to an open-air breakfast while watching the

ships sail in and out at the Golden Gate and hearing the seals barking

on the rocks. After that home and to rest.

AN ALL-NIGHT TOWN.

The city never went to sleep altogether. It was “an all-night” town. Few

of the restaurants ever closed, none of the saloons did. Always during

the whole twenty-four hours of the day there was “something doing” in

the Tenderloin. No hour of the night was ever free of revelry. It was

marvelous how they kept it up. The average San Franciscan could stay

awake all night at a card game, take a cold wash and a good breakfast

in the morning, and go straight downtown to business and feel none the

worse for it.

It was a gay town, a captivating, piquant, audacious, but not especially

wicked city. A Frenchy, a risque city it might justly have been called,

but it was not wicked in the sense that sordid vice, vulgar crime and

wretched squalor constitute wickedness.

It was a lovable place that everybody longed to get back to, once

having been there. A woman, leaving it for years, watched it from the

ferryboat, and, weeping, said, “San Francisco, oh, my San Francisco, I

am leaving thee.”

Will those who left it after the fire ever get back to their old

city again? We have already expressed our doubt of this. The old San

Francisco is probably gone, never to return. The new San Francisco will

be a cleaner, saner and safer city, destitute of its rookeries, its

tenements and its Chinatown. It will be a greater and more sightly

city than that of the past, but to those who knew and loved the old San

Francisco--San Francisco the captivating, the maddest, gayest, liveliest

and most rollicking in the country--there must be something impressibly

sad to its old inhabitants in the reflection that the new city of the

Golden Gate can never be quite the same as the haven of their early

affections.

CHAPTER XIII.

Plans to Rebuild San Francisco.

Almost as soon as the terrible conflagration had been checked and gotten

under control by the heroic efforts of the soldiers and firemen, a

little group of the leading citizens of the desolated city had met

in the office of Mayor Eugene E. Schmitz and had begun to plan the

restoration of their municipality. It was an admirable courage, bred in

the stock of those men who in 1849 left comfortable homes in the East to

seek their fortune in the Golden State, that inspired the loyal leaders

of the present day citizens to provide with far-seeing eyes for

the rebuilding of their homes and business houses with more orderly

precision after the fire than had been possible during the hustle of

early days in a new city.

The old San Francisco was no more, and never could be recalled save as

a memory. The local color, atmosphere, that which might be termed the

feeling of the old city, vanished with the clustered houses, as rich

in tradition as the ancient missions in whose cloisters worshiped the

Spanish padre “before the Gringo came.” Heartrending as it was to the

citizens who loved their homes and haunts to see them disappear into

smoke, there was an attraction about the city of the Golden Gate which

endeared it to all Americans.

One of San Francisco’s charms was in its defiance of precedent. There

were hills to be conquered, and San Francisco’ s expanding traffic

hurled itself at the face of them. It went up and up, with no thought

of finding a way around. So it happened that on some of the streets the

steepness was too great for horses. In the centre there are cable roads,

and on either side of the rails grass grows through the cobbles. The

earlier structures on the level were put together in haste. For the most

part they remained essentially unchanged until they fell with a

crash. True, they had become stained by time, unkempt, dwarfed by new

neighbors, but nobody desired to efface them. Away from the business

section houses appeared on the various hills, perched precariously near

the brink; houses reached by long flights and grown over with roses. The

bathing fogs touched them with gray. Moss grew on their roofs. In the

little, lofty yards calla lilies bloomed with the profusion of weeds.

The natural beauty of the site, the quaintness of the commercial and

social development of which it became the centre, attracted the poet

and the artist. It incited them to paint the attractions and to sing the

praises of their chosen home.

But the loyal sons of those brave pioneers who founded the metropolis

were not in the least daunted by the problem of raising from its ruins

the whole vast number of dwellings and business houses. The leaders of

the people, the men who had been identified with San Francisco since

its early days, and whose great fortunes were almost swept away by the

cataclysm, lent courage to all the wearied thousands by firm statements

of their optimism.

James D. Phelan, former Mayor of the city and one of its richest

capitalists, immediately announced his intention of rebuilding his

properties at Market and O’Farrell Streets, in the heart of the ruined

business district. William H. Crocker, one of the heaviest losers, a

nephew of Charles Crocker, who founded the Central Pacific Railroad with

Collis P. Huntington, Leland Stanford and others, stated emphatically

that he would put his shoulder to the wheel. On receiving the first news

of the disaster, and before he knew what his losses would amount to, he

said:

“Mark my words, San Francisco will arise from these ashes a greater and

more beautiful city than ever. I don’t take any stock in the belief of

some people that investors and residents will be panicky and afraid to

build up again. This calamity, terrible as it is, will mean nothing less

than a new and grander San Francisco. It is preposterous to suggest the

abandonment of the city. It is the natural metropolis of the Pacific

coast. God made it so. D. O. Mills, the Spreckels family, everybody I

know, have determined to rebuild and to invest more than ever before.

Burnham, the great Chicago architect, has been at work for a year or

more on plans to beautify San Francisco. Terrible as this destruction

has been, it serves to clear the way for the carrying out of these

plans. Why, even now we are figuring on rebuilding. More than that, I am

confident that, except for what fire has absolutely laid waste, it

will be found that the buildings are less injured than was supposed.

Plastering, ornamental work, glass and more or less loose material has

been shaken down, but the framework, I am sure, will be found intact in

many big buildings.”

D. Ogden Mills, of New York, who owned enormous properties in the

stricken city, was equally confident.

“We will go ahead,” said he, “and build the city, and build it so that

earthquakes will not shake it down and so fire will not destroy it, and

we will have a water system which will enable us to draw water from the

sea for fire extinguishing service and other municipal purposes. We will

thus have less to fear from the destruction of the land mains. The whole

point with all of us who own property down there is that we have to

build. To let it lie idle, piled with its ruins, would mean the throwing

away of money, and I am sure none of us intends to do that. The city

will go up like Baltimore did, and Galveston, and Charleston, and

Chicago, and there will be no lack of capital. California spirit and

California enterprise, which are always associated with the State of

California, will rise superior to this calamity.”

George Crocker, elder brother of William H. Crocker; Archer M.

Huntington, son of Collis P. Huntington; Mrs. Herman Oelrichs, Mrs. W.

K. Vanderbilt, Jr., members of the wealthy Spreckels family and others

all expressed, before the great conflagration had ceased burning, the

confident expectation that the city would rise, Phoenix-like, from its

ashes and become more beautiful and prosperous than it had ever been in

the past.

So complete was the calamity that the Government of the United States

lent a hand in the earliest work of restoration. On April 20th, two days

after the earthquake, Congress took immediate steps to repair or replace

all the public buildings damaged or destroyed in San Francisco. The

willingness of Congress to assist those in need of work by immediately

beginning the reconstruction of the Federal buildings was indicated

when Senator Scott, chairman of the Committee on Public Buildings and

Grounds, introduced a resolution calling upon the Secretary of the

Treasury for full information as to the exact condition of the various

government buildings in San Francisco, and instructing him to submit an

estimate showing the aggregate sum needed to repair or rebuild them.

The resolution suggested that steel frames be used in any new buildings.

This resolution was adopted. It was soon learned that the new Post

Office, the Mint and the old Customs House were practically undamaged.

The branch of the United States Mint, on Fifth Street, and the new Post

Office at Seventh and Mission Streets, were striking examples of the

superiority of workmanship put into Federal buildings. The old Mint

building, surrounded by a wide space of pavement, was absolutely

unharmed. The Mint made preparations to resume business at once.

The Post Office building also was virtually undamaged by fire. The

earthquake shock did some damage to the different entrances to the

building, but the walls were left standing in good condition. President

Roosevelt also sent a message to Congress asking that $300,000 be at

once appropriated to finish the Mare Island Navy Yard, in order that

employment might be given to the many workmen who were in extreme need

of money for the necessities of life.

It was a most fortunate circumstance that the property records in the

Hall of Records were unharmed either by earthquake or fire. Endless

disputes and litigation over the questions of ownerships would

undoubtedly have otherwise impeded the work of those sincerely

anxious to repair their shattered fortunes and opened the way for the

unscrupulous to take unfair advantage of the general chaos.

But the temper of the people was such that only the boldest would have

dared to use trickery for his own ends. Every man stood at the side of

his neighbor working for himself and for the good of all. Before the

embers were cool the owners of some of the damaged skyscrapers gave

commands to proceed instantly with their reconstruction. The Spreckels

Building, the Hayward Building, the St. Francis Hotel, the Merchants’

Exchange and structures that permitted it were ordered rushed into shape

as quickly as possible. And already contracts had been drawn up

for other steel-frame buildings to be erected with all speed. Many

substantial business men and property owners of San Francisco were in

consultation with the architects within a few days. While the work of

clearing away the debris went forward, a corps of draughtsmen was busily

occupied preparing plans for the new buildings to adorn the city.

Mayor Schmitz telegraphed to the Mayors of all leading cities, inquiring

how many architects or architectural draughtsmen could be induced to

leave for San Francisco at once, and hundreds of young men immediately

responded to the call. Experts of the several great contracting

companies hurried to the scene and were ready to deposit material and

labor on the ground for the work of restoration. Daniel H. Burnham,

a leading architect of Chicago, who had previously drawn plans for

beautifying the city, was summoned to superintend the work.

All the horses, mules and wagons obtainable were immediately pressed

into service to remove the debris and clear the streets so that traffic

could be resumed. Within a week after the first earthquake shock trolley

cars were running in the principal streets, telephone communication had

been re-established in the most needed quarters, electric lights were

available and business had begun again on a limited scale.

Yet, in spite of the indomitable courage of the citizens and the

efficient labor of the public officers and the utility companies, an

enormous amount of work remained. Virtually every bank in San Francisco

had to be rebuilt. Only the Market Street National Bank was left nearly

undamaged. An official list of the condition of the school buildings

throughout the city showed that twenty-nine school buildings were

destroyed and that forty-four were partially, at least, spared. Many

of the latter were so damaged that they had to be either pulled down or

thoroughly repaired, and arrangements were made to resume the short

term in tents erected in the parks, where thousands of the homeless had

already found temporary shelter. With these two vital classes of public

institutions prepared to care for the demands about to be made on them,

confidence was not lacking in other parts. Most of the foundries and

factories near the water front and south of Market Street immediately

called in all their employees and began to clear away the wreckage

and make ready for continuing business. Great credit is due to the

newspapers, nearly all of which continued their daily issues without

interruption, although their buildings, with offices and printing

plants, were entirely destroyed by the flames which followed the

earthquake. Those whose premises were early threatened with destruction

betook themselves to Oakland, seven miles distant across the bay, and

published their sheets from the establishments of the Oakland papers. A

thorough inspection shows that comparatively little damage was done in

the vicinity of the Cliff. The Cliff House, which was at first reported

to have been hurled into the sea, not only stood, but the damage

sustained by it from the earthquake was slight. The famous Sutro baths,

located near the Cliff House, with the hundreds of thousands of square

feet of glass roofing, also were practically unharmed. Only a few of

the windows in the Sutro baths and the Cliff House were broken, and

the lofty chimney of the pumping plant of the former establishment

was cracked only a trifle. When the situation was finally summed

up, however, nearly three-fourths of the city had to be rebuilt or

remodeled, and the cost of doing this was enough to appal the strongest

hearts.

Financially the prospect was encouraging. Not a bank lost the contents

of its fireproof vaults and remained practically unharmed, so far as

credit was concerned.

For a number of days it was impossible to open any strong boxes on

account of the great heat which the thick walls retained, and this

naturally caused some embarrassment and lack of ready money. Nearly all

of them, however, had strong connections in Eastern cities and large

balances to their credit in other banks of America and Europe. They

were also favored by the fact that the United States Mint and the

Sub-Treasury held between them some $245,000,000 in ready money. The

Secretary of the Treasury immediately deposited $10,000,000 to the

credit of the local banks, and financiers of the great business centres

of the country added to public confidence by prompt statements that they

would facilitate the reconstruction of the city by a liberal advancement

of funds.

One prominent Eastern capitalist expressed the general conviction in the

following words:

“No great city, unless it dried up entirely from lack of commercial life

blood, was ever annihilated by such a disaster as that of San Francisco.

Pompeii and Herculaneum were not great cities in the first place, and in

the second, they were completely covered, smothered as it were, with the

ashes and molten lava of the adjoining volcano, and nearly all of

their inhabitants perished. If it be admitted that three-fourths of the

superstructures, so to speak, of San Francisco, estimated according to

valuation, is destroyed, we have yet the fact remaining that the lives

of only about one four-hundredth of its population have been lost.

“San Francisco was not merely land and the buildings erected upon

it, but it was people, and one of the most active, most hopeful, most

vivacious human communities on the face of the earth. You cannot long

discourage such a community, unless you wipe out three-fourths of

its members. Will San Francisco rise again? Most certainly it will.

Galveston and Baltimore, not to mention Charleston, Boston and Chicago,

showed the spirit of material resurrection in American communities,

sore-smitten by calamity. After Galveston had been made a desert of sand

and debris, there were predictions that it would never rise again. What

was the outcome? A finer Galveston than before, and finer than many

years of slow improvement in the natural course would have made it.

Baltimore is busier commercially than it was before the great fire.

“San Francisco is exceedingly fortunate in the fact that its moneyed

institutions remain strong, with abundant supplies of funds. It is

true that many of them undoubtedly hold large numbers of real estate

mortgages as securities for loans, and that much of the property thus

represented is now in ashes. But with care and an accommodating spirit

practically all of those mortgaged can be so nursed that they will be

made absolutely good. The banks will be found to be only too eager to

afford new loans which will enable realty owners to rebuild. You will

see San Francisco rise a more splendid city than ever, and better

prepared to resist future earthquake shocks. Because it has had this

dreadful visitation is no reason for apprehension that another like it

will come within the life of the present generation, or two or three

after. The destruction of Lisbon in the middle of the eighteenth

century and its subsequent immunity from seismic damage is a reassuring

example.”

The municipality was in excellent financial condition to meet and rise

above the extraordinary needs of the situation. It had a bonded debt

of only $4,245,100, while its realty valuation was $402,127,261 and

its personalty $122,258,406. The question of issuing further amounts

of bonds was therefore one of the first measures considered by Mayor

Schmitz and his co-workers, and an appeal was made to the Federal

Government to guarantee the proposed loans, so that the most urgent work

which lay in the city’s province could be undertaken at once and without

an excessive burden of interest.

The vast insurance loss was divided among 107 companies, and, though

only a little more than half the damage was covered by policies, the

total swelled toward the colossal sum of $150,000,000. Several of the

largest companies were seriously crippled by the disaster and some were

forced into liquidation. To the great relief of the entire country,

nevertheless, the financial situation was not severely affected, and

there was every reason to believe that the great bulk of the insurance

would be paid.

CHAPTER XIV.

The Earthquake Wave Felt Round the Earth.

The outbreak of earth forces at San Francisco did not stand alone. There

were others elsewhere at nearly the same time, the whole seeming to

indicate a general disturbance in the interior of the earth’s crust.

Some scientists, indeed, declared that no possible connection could

exist between the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the earthquake at San

Francisco, but others were inclined to view certain facts in regard to

recent seismic and volcanic activity as, to say the least, suggestive.

As to the actual cause of the California earthquake, the wisest

confession we can make is that of ignorance, there being almost as

little known as to the origin, period and coming of earthquakes as when

Pliny wrote 1,800 years ago. The Roman observer knew that the tremor

passed like a wave through the surface of the earth; he knew that it

had a given direction, and he knew that certain regions were rife with

seismic disturbance. More he could not say, and when this is said all

has been said that is known to-day.

Setting aside these general considerations, let us return to the

question of the disaster at San Francisco on that fatal morning of April

18th. The shock did not come unexpectedly. A month previous there had

been a severe earthquake in the Island of Formosa, and many lives were

lost there, while an enormous amount of damage was done. Only a few days

before the event in San Francisco there was another earthquake in the

same island. Still greater havoc was caused by it than by the earthquake

in March, but fewer lives were lost, the reason being that the people

were warned in time. Early in April the eruption of Mount Vesuvius

reached its height and devastated the country around the volcano,

covering an enormous territory with ashes, and caused the loss of

hundreds of lives.

On Tuesday night, April 17th, word was received from Piatigorsk,

Circassia, that there had been two severe earthquake shocks the previous

day in Northern Caucasia. The same night a telegram from Madrid said

that the newspapers there reported that the long-dormant volcano on

Palma, the largest of the Canary Islands, was showing signs of eruption,

columns of smoke issuing from the crater.

WIDESPREAD EARTH TREMORS.

While scientists as a rule doubt that there was any connection between

these volcanic phenomena and the earthquake at San Francisco, yet

reports from the Mount Weather observation station in Virginia, a few

miles from Washington, show that the eruptions of Vesuvius acted on

the magnetic instruments by electro-magnetic waves in such a way as

to disturb the electrical potentials at that place. Be this as it may,

there is one remarkable circumstance in regard to all this activity. All

the places mentioned--Formosa, Southern Italy, Caucasia, and the Canary

Islands--lie within a belt bounded by lines a little north of the

fortieth parallel and a little south of the thirtieth parallel. San

Francisco is just south of the fortieth parallel, while Naples is just

north of it. The latitude of Calabria, where the terrible earthquakes

occurred in 1905, is the same as that of the territory affected by the

recent earthquake in the United States. This may or may not have some

bearing on the question.

Whatever be thought of all this, one thing is certain, the earthquake

which laid San Francisco in ruins was felt the world over, wherever

there were instruments in position to detect and record it. The

seismograph in the government observatory at Washington showed that

the first wave, on April 18th, came at 8.19--equivalent to 5.19 at San

Francisco; that at 8.25 there was a stronger wave motion, and that from

8.32 to 8.35 the recording pen was carried off the paper. The vibrations

did not entirely cease until 12.35 P. M., during this period there

having been nearly half an inch of to and fro motion in the surface of

the earth.

RECORDS OF FOREIGN OBSERVATIONS.

From far away New Zealand, on the same date, the government seismograph

at the capital, Wellington, recorded seismic waves that apparently

passed round the earth five times at intervals of about four hours each.

Across the Atlantic, at Heidelberg, in Germany, the records showed

vibrations lasting one hour. At Sarayevo, in Bosnia, there was a sharp

shock at 11 A. M., undulating from west to east. At Funfkirchen, in

Hungary, at Laibach, in Austria, in the Isle of Wight, off the coast

of England, and all through Italy, from north to south, the shocks were

felt.

At Hancock, Mich., a shock was felt on April 19th a mile below the

surface in the Quincy mine of such severity that one man was killed and

four injured by a fall of rock loosened by the trembling of the earth.

There is no evidence, however, that this had any connection with the

California disaster, the dates not coinciding.

Turning to the Far East, across the Pacific, seismographs in the

Imperial University of Tokio showed that the earthquake was felt there

eleven minutes later than in San Francisco, and similar instruments in

Manila detected the arrival of the seismic waves twenty minutes after

the San Francisco shock. In this there was a slight difference in time

compared with Tokio, but, considering the distance, near enough to prove

that the disturbances came from the same source.

Not until the day following was any noticeable disturbance felt in

Honolulu, but on April 19th shocks were plainly felt for six minutes and

the water in the harbor rose rapidly. Panic seemed imminent just before

the shocks subsided. While earthquakes are by no means infrequent in

these islands, this was more severe than any recorded in recent years,

causing buildings to sway to and fro and partly demolishing some of

frail construction.

If, as the majority of men qualified to discuss earthquakes seem to

think, the San Francisco earthquake had no connection with volcanic

action, but was caused by what is technically known as a “fault” in the

formation of the crust of the earth, it seems easy enough to account

for these wave motions travelling round the earth. How widely this may

really have made itself felt it is not possible to say. Several of the

great earthquakes in Japan have been recorded in the seismographs of

the observatories on every continent and in Australia, showing that in

severe disturbances of this kind the whole surface strata quiver, alike

under the oceans and over the continents and islands. At the time of a

shock, of course, half of the world is in darkness and asleep. This is

taken to account for the fact that so far only a few observatories have

reported catching the San Francisco vibrations.

The instruments invented for the recording of the motions of the

earth’s crust are looked upon by scientists as the most delicate of all

machines. So highly sensitive are they, indeed, that the very slightest

vibratory motion is recorded perfectly. Even the tread of feet cannot

escape this instrument if sufficient to cause a vibration.

There are three classes of instruments for the automatic recording

of earth tremors, each with its own particular function. First is the

seismoscope, which will merely detect and record the fact that there

has been such a tremor. Some of these are so equipped as to indicate the

time of the disturbance.

Second, is the seismometer, the function of which is to measure the

maximum force of the shock, either with or without an indication of its

direction. The third instrument is the seismograph, which is so arranged

that it will accurately record the number, succession, direction,

amplitude and period of successive oscillations. This last instrument is

by far the most delicate of the three.

In the construction of this earthquake recording machine the maker must

so suspend a heavy body that when its normal position is disturbed in

the most infinitesimal degree no reactionary force will be developed

tending to restore it to its original position. The inventor has never

been found who could accomplish this suspension of a body to perfection.

The seismograph of to-day, however, has reached a stage of perfection

where close approximations are obtained in the records made.

CHAPTER XV.

Vesuvius Devastates the Region of Naples.

We have in other chapters described the terrible work of Mount Vesuvius

in the past, from the far-off era of the destruction of Pompeii down to

the end of the last century. There comes before us now another frightful

eruption, one of the greatest in its history, that of 1906. For thirty

years before this outbreak the mighty volcano had been comparatively

quiet, rarely ceasing, indeed, to smoke and fume, but giving little

indication of the vast forces buried in its heart. It showed some

sympathy with Mont Pelee in 1902, and continued restless after that

time, but it was not until about the middle of February, 1906, that it

became threatening, lava beginning to overflow from the crater and make

its lurid way down the mountain’s side.

It was in the middle of the first week of April that these indications

rose to the danger point, the flow of lava suddenly swelling from a

rivulet to a river, pouring in a gleaming flood over the crater’s rim,

and meeting the other streams that came streaming down the volcano’s

rugged flank. While this went on the mountain remained comparatively

quiet, there being no explosions, though a huge cloud of volcanic ash

and cinders rose high in the air until it hung over the crater in the

shape of an enormous pine tree, while from it a shower of dust and sand,

soon to become terrible, began to descend upon the surrounding fields

and towns.

Dangerous as is Vesuvius at any time, the people of the vicinity dare

its perils for the allurement of its fertile soil. A ring of populous

villages encircles it, flourishing vineyards and olive groves extend

on all sides, and the hand of industry does not hesitate to attack its

threatening flanks. The intervals between its death-dealing throes are

so long that the peasants are always ready to dare destruction for the

hope of winning the means of life from its soil.

THE RIVERS OF LAVA.

All this locality was now a field of terror and death. Down on the

vineyards and villages poured the smothering ashes in an ever increasing

rain; toward them slowly and threateningly crawled the fiery serpents

of the lava streams; and from their homes fled thousands of the

terror-stricken people, frantic with horror and dismay. A number of

populous villages were threatened by the lurid lava streams, the most

endangered being Bosco Trecase, with its 10,000 inhabitants. Toward this

devoted town poured steadily the irresistible flood of molten rock. The

soldiers who had been hurried to the front sought to divert its flow by

digging a wide ditch across its course and throwing up a high bank of

earth, but they worked in vain. The demon of destruction was not to be

robbed of its prey. The liquid stream advanced like a colossal serpent

of fire, turning its head like a crawling snake to the right and left,

but keeping steadily on toward the fated town. The ditch was filled; the

bank gave way; the first house was reached and burst into flames; the

creeping stream of fire pushed on to the next houses in its way; only

then did the despairing people desert their homes and flee for their

lives, carrying with them the little they could snatch of their

treasured possessions.

F. Marion Crawford, the novelist, who was present at this scene, thus

describes the flight of the terrified people:

“I saw men, women and children and infants, whose mothers carried them

at the breast or in their aprons, fleeing in an endless procession.

Dogs, too, and cats were on the carts, and sometimes even chickens, tied

together by the legs, and piles of mattresses and pillows and shapeless

bundles of clothes. All were white with dust. Under the lurid glare I

saw one old woman lying on her back across a cart, ghastly white and,

if not dead already of fear and heat and suffocation, certainly almost

gone. We ourselves could hardly breathe.”

It was on Saturday, the 7th, that Bosco Trecase became the prey of the

river of molten rock. During that night and the following day the crisis

of the eruption came. The observatory on the mountain side was occupied

by Professor Matteucci, his assistant, Professor Perret, of New York,

and two domestics, all others having been sent away. Their description

of the scene in which they found themselves is vividly picturesque. At

midnight the situation in the observatory was terrible. The forces

of the earthquake were let loose and the ground rocked so that it

was almost impossible to stand. The roaring of the main crater was

deafening, while the volcano poured forth its contents like a fountain,

and the electric display was terrifying, constant claps of thunder

following the lurid flashes of lightning, which gave the sky a blood-red

hue.

Shortly after three o’clock in the morning the explosive energy of the

mighty mass culminated. The whole cone burst open with a tremendous

earthquake shock, from the heart of the recently silent mountain came a

deafening roar, and red-hot rocks, like the balls from nature’s mighty

artillery, were hurled a half mile into the air, while a dense mass of

ashes and sand was flung to three or four times this height. All the

next day the terrible detonation kept up, and a hail of bullet-like

stones poured downward from the skies. Rarely has a more terrible Sunday

been seen. It was as if the demons of earth and air were let loose and

were seeking to destroy man and his puny works.

THE CRISIS OF THE ERUPTION.

This frightful explosion of the 8th of April was the worst of the

dreadful display of volcanic forces, but the work kept up with

diminishing intensity much of the following week. The ashes and cinders

continued to pour down in suffocating showers, covering the ground to

a depth of four or five feet in the vicinity of the volcano and to a

considerable depth at Naples, ten miles away. The sun disappeared

behind the thick cloud that filled the air, and the scene resembled that

described by Pliny more than eighteen hundred years before.

Of Bosco Trecase nothing was left but the large stone church and a few

houses. Another river of lava reached the outskirts of Torre del Greco,

and a third stopped at the cemetery of Torre Annunziata. Those towns

escaped, but thousands of acres of fertile cultivated land, with farm

houses and stock, were destroyed. The peninsular railway up the mountain

was ruined and the large hotel burned. One writer tells the following

tale of what he saw on that fatal Saturday and Sunday:

“On the road I met hundreds of families in flight, carrying their few

miserable possessions. The spectacle of collapsing carts and fainting

women was frequently seen. When one reached the lava stream a stupefying

spectacle presented itself. From a point on the mountain between the

towns I saw four rivers of molten fire, one of which, 200 feet wide

and over 40 deep, was moving slowly and majestically onward, devouring

vineyards and olive groves. I witnessed the destruction of a farm house

enveloped on three sides by lava. Immediately overhead the great crater

was belching incandescent rock and scoria for an incredible distance.

The whole scene was wreathed with flames, and a perpetual roar was

heard. Ever and anon the cone of the volcano was encircled with vivid

electric phenomena, amid which a downpour of liquid fire on all sides of

the crater was revealed in magnificent awfulness. In the evening there

was a frightful shock of earthquake, which was repeated at two o’clock

on Sunday morning. Simultaneously the lava streams redoubled their

onrush, and men, women and children fled precipitately toward the sea.

The lava had invaded the road behind them.”

A REIGN OF TERROR.

The great loss of life was due to the vast fall of ashes, which crushed

in hundreds of roofs and buried the occupants within the ruins of their

homes. In all the neighboring towns buildings were destroyed in great

numbers, an early estimate being that fully 5,000 houses had been partly

crushed or utterly destroyed. On the Ottajano side of the mountain,

where the ashes fell in greatest profusion, all the houses of the

villages were damaged, and Ottajano itself was left a wreck, several

hundred dead bodies being taken from its ruins. In Naples the ash fall

was so incessant that those who could afford it wore automobile coats,

caps and goggles, while the people generally sought to save their

eyes and faces by the aid of paper masks and umbrellas. The drivers of

trolley cars were obliged to wear masks of some transparent material

under the vizors of their caps.

DISASTERS AT SAN GIUSEPPE AND NAPLES.

There were two special disasters attended by serious loss of life. On

the 9th, while a congregation of two hundred or more were attending mass

in the church at San Giuseppe, the roof crushed in from the weight of

ashes upon it and fell upon the worshippers below, few or none of whom

escaped unhurt. Fifty-four dead bodies were taken from the ruins and a

large number were severely injured. The Mayor of the town was dismissed

from his office for leaving his post of duty in the face of danger.

The second disaster, one of the same character, took place at Naples.

This was on Tuesday, April 10th. Just previous to it the people had been

marching in religious processions through the streets, to render thanks

for the apparent cessation of the activity of Vesuvius. Motley but

picturesque processions were these, headed by boys carrying candles,

which burned simply in the full sunshine and bearing aloft images of the

Madonna or saints, clad in gorgeous robes of cheap blue or yellow

satin. Their joy was suddenly changed to grief by tidings of a frightful

disaster. The roof of the Monte Oliveto market, fronting on the Toledo,

the main thoroughfare, had suddenly crushed in, burying more than 200

people beneath its heavy fall.

The market had been crowded with buyers and their children, and it was

the busiest hours of the day in the great roofed courtyard, covering a

space 600 feet square, when, with scarcely a tremor of warning, there

came a frightful crash and a dense cloud of dust covered the scene, from

out of which came heartrending screams of agony. The volcanic ash which,

unnoticed, had gathered thickly on the roof, had broken it in by its

weight.

The news set the people frantic with grief and indignation. They

insisted that the authorities knew that the roof was unsafe and had

neglected their duty. Cursing and screaming in their intense excitement,

they surrounded the market, endeavoring with frantic haste to remove the

heavy beams from beneath which came the appealing calls for help, many

of the rescuers sobbing aloud as they worked. It required a large force

of police and soldiers to keep them back and permit the firemen and

other trained workers to carry on more systematically the work of

relief. Twelve persons proved to have been killed, two fatally injured,

twenty-four seriously hurt and over a hundred badly bruised and cut.

Among these were many children, whose parents had sent them to do the

marketing without a dream of danger, and the grief of the parents was

intense. The Duke of Aosta, Prefect of Naples, directed the work of

rescue, while his wife assisted in the care of the injured. As the

Duchess bent in the hospital to give a cooling drink to a badly bruised

little girl she felt a kiss upon her hand. Looking down, she saw a woman

kneeling at her feet, who gratefully said: “Your Excellency, she is all

I have. I am a widow. May God reward you.”

While this scene of horror was taking place in Naples the fate of the

town and villages grouped around the foot of the volcano seemed as

hopeless as ever. Early on the 10th the showers of ashes and streams

of lava diminished and almost ceased, but later the same day they began

again, and the terrified inhabitants feared that a catastrophe like that

which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum was about to visit them. The lava

which reached the cemetery of Torre Annunziata turned in the direction

of Pompeii as if to freshly entomb that exhumed city of the past. A

violent storm of sulphurous rain fell at San Giuseppe, Vesuviana and

Sariano, and on all sides the fall of sand and ashes came on again in

full strength. Even with the sun shining high in the heavens the light

was a dim yellow, in the midst of which the few persons who still

haunted the stricken towns moved about in the awful stillness of

desolation like gray ghosts, their clothing, hair and beards covered

with ashes.

THE ERUPTION RESUMED.

A typical case was that of Torre del Greco. Though for thirty hours

the place had been deserted, a few ghostly figures could be seen

at intervals when the vivid flashes of lightning illuminated the

gloom-covered scene, wandering desolately about, hungry and thirsty,

their throats parched by smoke and dust, yet unable to tear themselves

away from the ruins of their late comfortable homes.

So deep was the ash fall that railway or tramway travel to the inner

circle of towns was impossible, and the great depth of fallen dust

choked the roads so as to render travel by carriage or on foot very

difficult. A party of officials made a tour of inspection by automobile,

visiting a number of the town, but were prevented by the state of the

roads from reaching others. Ottajano was thus cut off from travel, and

a heavy fall of ashes followed the officials in their retreat. At Bosco

Trecase the lava had gathered into a lake, already growing solid on top,

but a mass of liquid rock beneath.

The lava carried vast masses of burnt stone and sulphur on its surface,

like dross on melted lead, and nothing was visible toward Bosco

Trecase but endless acres of dark scoriae, broken here and there by the

greenish, curling smoke of sulphur. At one point a great cone pine tree,

torn up by its roots and turned to black charcoal, stuck out of the mass

at a sharp angle. The air was almost unbearable, the heat intense, and

few could long bear the dangers and discomfort of the situation.

SCENES OF HORROR.

The greatest depth of ashes encountered was in the vicinity of Ottajano.

Here large areas were buried to a depth of several feet. Soldiers had

been sent there with military carts, carrying provisions and surgical

appliances, with orders to lend their aid in the work of relief. They

found it almost impossible to make their way through the deep fine dust,

and the tales of horror and heroism they had to tell resembled those

that must of old have been borne to Rome by the fleeing inhabitants of

Pompeii.

Efforts were made to remove the children and old persons in the carts,

but when these had gone a few hundred feet it was found that, although

there were four horses harnessed to each vehicle, they could not pull

their loads through the ashes. This caused a panic among the children,

who expected to be buried in the incessant fall from the volcano, and

they fled in all directions in the darkness and blinding rain. Searching

parties went after them, but in spite of continuous shouting and calling

no trace was found of the little ones, and numbers of the children were

undoubtedly smothered by the ashes and sand.

Many of the inhabitants had been buried in the ruins of their houses,

and the scenes when the victims were unearthed were often piteous and

terrible. The positions of the bodies showed that the victims had died

while in a state of great terror, the faces being convulsed with fear.

Three bodies were found in a confessional of one of the fallen churches.

One body was that of an old woman who was sitting with her right arm

raised as though to ward off the advancing danger. The second was that

of a child about eight years old. It was found dead in a position, which

would indicate that the child had fallen with a little dog close to it

and had died with one arm raised across its face, to protect itself

and pet from the crumbling ruins. The third body, that of a woman, was

reduced to an unrecognizable mass. These three victims were reverently

laid side by side while a procession of friends and relatives offered up

prayers beside them.

One soldier rode his horse through the ashes reaching up to its flanks,

calling out, “Who wants help?” He was rewarded by hearing a woman’s

voice reply in weak tones and, springing from his horse, he floundered

through the ashes to the ruined walls of a house from which the voice

seemed to come. As he made his way through the soft, treacherous

layer of scoriae which surrounded the destroyed habitation, and with

difficulty worked his way toward the building the soldier shouted

words of encouragement and, climbing over a heap of ruins and braving a

toppling wall, entered the building. In the cellar he found the bodies

of three children. Near them was a woman, barely alive, who by almost

superhuman efforts for hours had succeeded in freeing herself from a

mass of debris which had fallen upon her. The soldier picked the woman

up in his arms and carried her to a place of safety. It was found that

both legs were broken and that she had been badly crushed about the

body.

Some extraordinary escapes from death took place. A man and his

four children were rescued after having been lost in the ash-covered

wilderness for fifty-six hours. They were terribly exhausted, and were

reduced almost to skeletons.

Robert Underwood Johnson, one of the editors of the “Century Magazine”,

who happened to be in Rome at the time of the eruption, made one of a

party who ventured as near the scene of destruction as they could safely

approach. From his graphic story of his experiences we copy some of the

most interesting details.

AN AMERICAN OBSERVER.

“We caught a train for Torre Annunziata, three miles this side of

Pompeii and two miles from the southern end of the wedge of lava which

destroyed Bosco Trecase. We had a magnificent view of the eruption,

eight miles away. Rising at an angle of fifty degrees, the vast mass of

tumult roundness was beautifully accentuated by the full moon, shifting

momentarily into new forms and drifting south in low, black clouds of

ashes and cinders reaching to Capri. At Torre del Greco we ran under

this terrifying pall, apparently a hundred feet above, the solidity of

which was soon revealed in the moonlight. The torches of the railway

guards added to the effect, but greatly relieved the sulphurous

darkness.

“We reached Torre Annunziata at three in the morning. There was little

suggestion of a disaster as we trudged through the sleeping town to the

lava, two miles away. The brilliant moon gave us a superb view of the

volcano, a gray-brown mass rising, expanding and curling in with a

profile like a monstrous cyclopean face. But nothing in mythology gives

a suggestion of the fascination of this awful force, presenting the

sublime beauty above, but in its descent filled with the mysterious

malignance of God’s underworld.

“We reached the lava at a picturesque cypress-planted cemetery on

the northern boundary of Torre Annunziata. It was as if the dead had

effectually cried out to arrest the crushing river of flames which

pitilessly engulfed the statue of St. Anne with which the people of

Bosco Reale tried to stay it, as at Catania the veil of St. Agathe is

said to have stayed a similar stream from Mount Etna.

“We climbed on the lava. It was cool above but still alive with fire

below. We could see dimly the extent of the destruction beyond the

barrier of brown which had enclosed the streets, torn down the houses,

invaded the vineyards and broken Cook’s railways. A better idea of the

surroundings was obtained at dawn from the railway. We saw north what

was left of Bosco Trecase--a great, square stone church and a few houses

inland in a sea of dull, brown lava. North and east rose a thousand

patches of blue smoke like swamp miasma. All was dull and desolate slag,

with nowhere the familiar serpentine forms of the old lava streams. In

terrible contrast with the volcanic evidences were strong cypresses and

blooming camelias in a neighboring cemetery.

“We ate a hasty luncheon before sunrise, when the great beauty of the

scene was revealed. The column now seemed higher and more massive,

rising to three times the height of Vesuvius. Each portion had a

concentric motion and new aspects. The south edges floating toward the

sea showed exquisite curved surfaces, due to the upper moving current.

It was like the decoration of the side of a great sarcophagus. As a

yellow dust hangs over Naples and hides the volcano, I count myself

fortunate to have seen all day from leeward this spectacle of changing,

undiminishing beauty.

“The wedge of cultivated land ruined east of the volcano extended at

least ten miles, with a width of twenty or thirty miles. Fancy a rich

and thickly populated country of vineyards lying under three to six

inches of ashes and cinders of the color of chocolate with milk, while

above, to the west, the volcano in full activity is distributing to the

outer edges of the circle the same fate, and you will get an idea of the

desolate impression of the scene, a tragedy colossal and heartrending.

Like that of Calabria, it enlists the sympathy of the civilized world.

It takes time for such a calamity to be realized.

“Two miles below San Giuseppe we struck cinders which the soldiers

were shoveling, making a narrow road for the refugees. Our wagon driver

begged off from completing his contract to take us to San Giuseppe. We

had not the heart to insist, so the rest of the journey to the railway

at Palma, eight miles, was made laboriously on foot for three hours

through sliding cinders.

“In many places temporary shelters had been built by the roadside,

like children’s playhouses. Here women were huddled with their bedding,

awaiting the coming of supplies which the army had begun to distribute.

The men were largely occupied with shoveling cinders from the stronger

roofs and floors into heaps three to six feet deep along the roadside.

Many two-wheeled carts loaded with salvage, drawn by donkeys or pushed

by peasants, were making their way along, the women with bundles on

their heads or carrying poultry.

“In the square of San Giuseppe was an encampment of soldiers, with low

tents. Near a destroyed church, in coarse yellow linen shrouds, were the

bodies of thirty-three of the persons who there lost their lives. The

peasants were sad, but uncomplaining; in fact, for so excitable a people

they were wonderfully calm. As evidence of the thrift and self-respect

of these, we were not once asked for alms during the afternoon.”

THE KING AT THE FRONT.

The Italian Government did all it could at the moment to alleviate the

horrors of the situation, sending money to be expended in relief

work and dispatching high officials of the government to give aid and

encouragement by their presence. The King, Victor Emmanuel, and Queen

Helene reached the scene of destruction as early as possible and lent

their personal assistance to the work of rescue.

Obliged to leave his automobile, which could not move over the

cinder-choked road, the King went forward with difficulty on horseback,

the animal floundering through four feet of ashes, stumbling into holes,

and half blinded by the fall of dust and cinders.

“How did you escape?” he asked a priest whom he met in his journey.

“I put myself in safety,” was the reply.

“What do you mean?” asked the King.

“Realizing the danger, I left Nola.”

“What!” cried the King, with a flush of anger. “You, a minister of God,

were not here to share the danger of your people and administer the last

sacraments? You did very wrong and forgot your duty.”

Reaching Ottejano, the King did what he could to expedite the work

of rescue at that central point of disaster, more than a hundred dead

bodies being taken from the ruins in his presence. He stood with set

pale face watching the removal of the victims and directing the movement

of the workers. During his visit at the front he inspected the temporary

camp hospitals, in which the soldiers were caring for the injured and

suffering, speaking to the poor victims, giving them what comfort he

could, and asking what he could do to relieve their distress. Every

request or desire was received with sympathy and orders given to have it

fulfilled.

A pitiful scene took place when the King bent over a poor man, whose

right leg had been amputated, and asked what he could do to comfort and

aid him in his affliction.

“Send me my son, who is serving as a soldier,” said the maimed peasant.

The King, visibly affected, clasped the old man’s hand and exclaimed:

“My poor fellow! I can do much, but to grant your request would mean

breaking the laws, which I must be the first to respect. I would give

anything I have were it possible by so doing to send your son to you,

but I cannot do so.”

While the King was thus engaged at the scenes of desolation, Queen

Helene visited the charitable institutions at Naples and inspected the

places where the refugees were housed, doing what she could to improve

conditions and add to the comfort of the sufferers. The Princess of

Schleswig-Holstein, who was in Naples, made an automobile visit to the

afflicted towns, but the motor broke down, and she was forced to return

on foot, walking a distance of twelve miles through the ashes and

displaying a power of endurance that surprised the natives.

THE CANOPY OF DUST.

By Friday, April 13th, the eruption was practically at an end. Vesuvius

had spent itself in the enormous convulsion of the 7th and 8th and

the subsequent minor explosions and had returned to its normal state,

ceasing to give any signs of life, except the cloud of smoke which still

rose from its crater and spread like a thick curtain over and around the

mountain. Looked at from Naples, there was none of the familiar aspects

of the volcano, with its output of smoke and ashes by day and fiery

gleam by night. Now it lay buried in darkness and obscurity, clothed

in a dense pall of smoke. At Rome there was sunshine, but twenty miles

south hung a misty veil, and twenty-five miles above Naples a zone of

semi-obscurity began, blotting out the sun, whose light trickled through

with a sickly glare. Everything was whitened with powdery dust; pretty

white villas were daubed and dripping with mud, and people were busy

shoveling the ashes from their roofs.

The crowds at the stations resembled millers, their clothes flour

covered; the Campania presented the appearance of a Dakota prairie after

a blizzard of snow, though everything was gray instead of white. The

ashes lay in drifts knee deep. As the volcano was approached semi-night

replaced the day, the gloom being so deep that telegraph poles twenty

feet away could not be seen. Breathing was difficult, and the smoke made

the eyes water. At Naples, however, a favorable wind had cleared the air

of smoke, the sun shone brightly, and the versatile people were happy

once more. The goggles and eye-screens had disappeared, but the streets

were anything but comfortable, for some six thousand men were at work

clearing the ashes from the roofs and main streets and piling them in

the middle of the narrow streets, making the passage of vehicles very

difficult and the sidewalks far from comfortable for foot passengers.

But while brightness and joy reigned at Naples, there were gruesome

scenes within the volcanic zone. At Bosco Trecase soldiers carried on

the work of exhumation, being able to work only an hour at a time on

account of the advanced stage of decomposition of the bodies. Many of

these were shapeless, unrecognizable masses of flesh and bones, while

others were little disfigured. To lessen the danger of an epidemic the

bodies were buried as quickly as possible in quicklime.

On Sunday, the 15th, the searchers at Ottejano were surprised at finding

two aged women still alive, after six days’ entombment in the ruins.

They were among those who had been buried by the falling walls a week

before. The rafters of the house had protected them, and a few morsels

of food in their pockets aided to keep them alive. At some points there

the ashes were ten feet deep. At San Giuseppe bodies of women were found

in whose hands were coins and jewels, and one woman held a jewelled

rosary. This recalls the results of exploration at Herculaneum and

Pompeii, where were similar instances of death overtaking the victims of

the volcano while fleeing with their jewels in their hands.

It is interesting to learn that two men stood heroically to their post

of duty during the whole scene of the explosion, Professor Matteucci,

Director of the Royal Observatory, and his American assistant, Professor

Frank A. Perret, of New York. Though the building occupied by them

was exposed to the full force of the rain of stones from the burning

mountain, they remained undauntedly at their post through that week of

terror. On the 14th some of that venturesome fraternity, the newspaper

correspondents, reached their eyrie on the highest habitable point on

Vesuvius and heard the story of their experiences.

THE HEROES OF THE OBSERVATORY.

For several days Professors Matteucci and Perret and their two servants

had been cut off from the outside world and bombarded by the volcano,

their rations consisting of bread, cheese and dried onions, until on

Friday a hardy guide was induced to push through to them with

some provisions. During the eruption the Professor had kept at his

instruments, taking observations day and night and making calculations

in the midst of the inferno. Roughly dressed, he looked like a Western

cowboy after a hard ride in a dust storm. The portico where he stood was

knee deep in ashes, and from the observatory terrace narrow paths had

been cut through the ashes, but as far as the eye could reach an ocean

of ashes and twisted rivers were alone visible, with Vesuvius rising

grimly in the midst. The great monster was enveloped in a cloak of

white, as if buried under a snowstorm, its surface being here and there

slit with gulches in which lava ran. At the bottom of one of those

gulches lay the wrecked remnants of the peninsular railway, a portion

of its twisted cable protruding through the ashes. As the correspondents

ascended the mountain they were surprised by the apparition of

natives, men wrinkled with age, who emerged from dugouts just below

the observatory and offered them milk and eggs, just as if they were

ordinary visitors to the volcano. As they descended they heard the

sound of a mandolin from one of these dugouts. Evidently Vesuvius had no

terrors for these case-hardened veterans.

We have already told the story gleaned by the correspondents from the

daring scientists. Matteucci completed his record of boldness on Friday,

the 13th, by climbing to a point far above the observatory, at the

imminent risk of his life, to observe the conditions then existing. From

what he says he believed the end of the disturbance near, though he did

not venture to predict. As for the ashes, which a light wind was then

blowing in a direction away from Naples, he said: “The ill wind is now

blowing good to other places, for ashes are the best fertilizer it is

possible to use. It is merely a question just now of having too much of

a good thing.”

This is a fact so far as the volcanic ash is concerned. An examination

of the ashes a few days ago shows that they will prove an active and

valuable fertilizer. The fertile slopes of Vesuvius have ever been an

allurement to the vine-grower, four crops a year being a temptation no

possible danger could drive him from, and as soon as the mountain grows

surely peaceful after this eruption, we shall find its farmers risking

again the chance of its uncertain temper. But this is not the case with

the land covered with lava and cinders. Time for their disintegration

is necessary before they can be brought under cultivation, and this is

a matter of years. After the great eruption of 1871-72 the land covered

with cinders did not bear crops for seven years, and there is no reason

that they will do so sooner on the present occasion. So for years to

come much of the volcanic soil must remain a barren and desert void.

CHAPTER XVI.

The Great Lisbon and Calabrian Earthquakes.

To our account of the great earth convulsions of San Francisco it is in

place to append a description of some similar events of older date. It

is due to the same causes, whatever these causes may be, the imprisoned

forces within the earth acting over great distances during the

earthquake, while they are concentrated within some limited space when

the volcano begins its work. The earthquake is the most terrible to

mankind of all the natural agencies of destruction. While the volcano

usually has a greater permanent effect upon surface conditions, it is,

as a rule, much less destructive to human life, the earthquake often

shaking down cities and burying all their inhabitants in one common

grave. Violent earthquakes are also of far more frequent occurrence than

destructive volcanic eruptions, many hundreds of them having taken place

during the historic period.

While the earthquake is only indirectly connected with the subject of

our work, it seems desirable to make some mention of it here, at least

so far as relates to those terrible convulsions whose destructiveness

has given them special prominence in the history of great disasters.

Ancient notable examples are those which threw down the famous Colossus

of Rhodes and the Pharos of Alexandria. The city of Antioch was a

terrible sufferer from this affliction, it having been devastated some

time before the Christian era, while in the year 859 more than 15,000

of its houses were destroyed. Of countries subject to earthquakes, Japan

has been an especial sufferer, in some cases mountains or islands being

elevated in association with shocks; in others, great tracts of land

being swallowed up by the sea. The number of deaths in some of these

instances was enormous.

Numerous thrilling examples of the destructive work of the earthquake

at various periods are on record. Of these we have given elsewhere a

tabular list of the more important, and shall confine ourselves to a

few striking examples of its destructive action. In the record of great

earthquakes, one of the most famous is that which in 1755 visited the

city of Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, and left that populous, place

in ruin and dire distress. It may be well to recall the details of this

dire event to the memories of our readers.

THE GREAT LISBON EARTHQUAKE

On the night of the 31st of October, 1755, the citizens of the fair city

of Lisbon lay down to sleep, in merciful ignorance of what was awaiting

them on the morrow. The morning of the 1st of November dawned, and gave

no sign of approaching calamity. The sun rose in its brightness, the

warmth was genial, the breezes gentle, the sky serene. It was All

Saints’ Day--a high festival of the Church of Rome. The sacred edifices

were thronged with eager crowds, and the ceremonies were in full

progress, when the assembled throngs were suddenly startled from their

devotions. From the ground beneath came fearful sounds that drowned

the peal of the organ and the voices of the choirs. These underground

thunders having rolled away, an awful silence ensued. The panic-stricken

multitudes were paralyzed with terror. Immediately after the ground

began to heave with a long and gentle swell, producing giddiness and

faintness among the people. The tall piles swayed to and fro, like

willows in the wind. Shrieks of horror rose from the terrified assembly.

Again the earth heaved, and this time with a longer and higher wave.

Down came the ponderous arches, the stately columns, the massive walls,

the lofty spires, tumbling upon the heads of priests and people. The

graven images, the deified wafers, and they who had knelt in adoration

before them--the worshipped and the worshippers alike--were in a moment

buried under one undistinguishable mass of horrible ruins. Only a few,

who were near the doors, escaped to tell the tale.

It fared no better with those who had remained in their dwellings. The

terrible earth-wave overthrew the larger number of the private houses in

the city, burying their inhabitants under the crumbling walls. Those who

were in the streets more generally escaped, though some there, too, were

killed by falling walls.

The sudden overthrow of so many buildings raised vast volumes of fine

dust, which filled the atmosphere and obscured the sun, producing a

dense gloom. The air was full of doleful sounds--the groans of agony

from the wounded and the dying, screams of despair from the horrified

survivors, wails of lamentation from the suddenly bereaved, dismal

howlings of dogs, and terrified cries of other animals.

In two or three minutes the clouds of dust fell to the ground, and

disclosed the scene of desolation which a few seconds had wrought. The

ruin, though general, was not universal. A considerable number of houses

were left standing--fortunately tenantless--for a third great earth-wave

traversed the city, and most of the buildings which had withstood the

previous shocks, already severely shaken, were entirely overthrown.

WATER ADDS TO THE DESTRUCTION

The last disaster filled the surviving citizens with the impulse of

flight. The more fortunate of them ran in the direction of the open

country, and succeeded in saving their lives; but a great multitude

rushed down to the harbor, thinking to escape by sea. Here, however,

they were met by a new and unexpected peril. The tide, after first

retreating for a little, came rolling in with an immense wave, about

fifty feet in height, carrying with it ships, barges and boats, and

dashing them in dire confusion upon the crowded shore. Overwhelmed

by this huge wave, great numbers were, on its retreat, swept into the

seething waters and drowned. A vast throng took refuge on a fine new

marble quay, but recently completed, which had cost much labor and

expense. This the sea-wave had spared, sweeping harmless by. But, alas!

it was only for a moment. The vast structure itself, with the whole of

its living burden, sank instantaneously into an awful chasm which opened

underneath. The mole and all who were on it, the boats and barges moored

to its sides, all of them filled with people, were in a moment ingulfed.

Not a single corpse, not a shred of raiment, not a plank nor a splinter

floated to the surface, and a hundred fathoms of water covered the

spot. To the first great sea-wave several others succeeded, and the bay

continued for a long time in a state of tumultuous agitation.

About two hours after the first overthrow of the buildings, a new

element of destruction came into play. The fires in the ruined houses

kindled the timbers, and a mighty conflagration, urged by a violent

wind, soon raged among the ruins, consuming everything combustible, and

completing the wreck of the city. This fire, which lasted four days, was

not altogether a misfortune. It consumed the thousands of corpses which

would otherwise have tainted the air, adding pestilence to the other

misfortunes of the survivors. Yet they were threatened with an enemy not

less appalling, for famine stared them in the face. Almost everything

eatable within the precincts of the city had been consumed. A set

of wretches, morever, who had escaped from the ruins of the prisons,

prowled among the rubbish of the houses in search of plunder, so that

whatever remained in the shape of provisions fell into their hands and

was speedily devoured. They also broke into the houses that remained

standing, and rifled them of their contents. It is said that many of

those who had been only injured by the ruins, and might have escaped by

being extricated, were ruthlessly murdered by those merciless villains.

The total loss of life by this terrible catastrophe is estimated at

60,000 persons, of whom about 40,000 perished at once, and the remainder

died afterwards of the injuries and privations they sustained. Twelve

hundred were buried in the ruins of the general hospital, eight hundred

in those of the civil prison, and several thousands in those of the

convents. The loss of property amounted to many millions sterling.

WIDE-SPREAD DESTRUCTION

Although the earth-wave traversed the whole city, the shock was felt

more severely in some quarters than in others. All the older part of the

town, called the Moorish quarter, was entirely overthrown; and of the

newer part, about seventy of the principal streets were ruined.

Some buildings that withstood the shocks were destroyed by fire. The

cathedral, eighteen parish churches, almost all the convents, the halls

of the inquisition, the royal residence, and several other fine palaces

of the nobility and mansions of the wealthy, the custom-houses, the

warehouses filled with merchandise, the public granaries filled with

corn, and large timber yards, with their stores of lumber, were either

overthrown or burned.

The king and court were not in Lisbon at the time of this great

disaster, but were living in the neighborhood at the castle of Belem,

which escaped injury. The royal family, however, were so alarmed by the

shocks, that they passed the following night in carriages out of

doors. None of the officers of state were with them at the time. On

the following morning the king hastened to the ruined city, to see what

could be done toward restoring order, aiding the wounded, and providing

food for the hungry.

The royal family and the members of the court exerted themselves to the

uttermost, the ladies devoting themselves to the preparation of lint and

bandages, and to nursing the wounded, the sick, and the dying, of whom

the numbers were overwhelming. Among the sufferers were men of quality

and once opulent citizens, who had been reduced in a moment to absolute

penury. The kitchens of the royal palace, which fortunately remained

standing, were used for the purpose of preparing food for the starving

multitudes. It is said that during the first two or three days a pound

of bread was worth an ounce of gold. One of the first measures of the

government was to buy up all the corn that could be obtained in the

neighborhood of Lisbon, and to sell it again at a moderate price, to

those who could afford to buy, distributing it gratis to those who had

nothing to pay.

For about a month afterward earthquake shocks continued, some of them

severe. It was several months before any of the citizens could summon

courage to begin rebuilding the city. But by degrees their confidence

returned. The earth had relapsed into repose, and they set about the

task of rebuilding with so much energy, that in ten years Lisbon again

became one of the most beautiful capitals of Europe.

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE LISBON EARTHQUAKE

The most distinguishing peculiarities of this earthquake were the

swallowing up of the mole, and the vast extent of the earth’s surface

over which the shocks were felt. Several of the highest mountains in

Portugal were violently shaken, and rent at their summits; huge masses

falling from them into the neighboring valleys. These great fractures

gave rise to immense volumes of dust, which at a distance were mistaken

for smoke by those who beheld them. Flames were also said to have been

observed: but if there were any such, they were probably electrical

flashes produced by the sudden rupture of the rocks.

The portion of the earth’s surface convulsed by this earthquake is

estimated by Humboldt to have been four times greater than the whole

extent of Europe. The shocks were felt not only over the Spanish

peninsula, but in Morocco and Algeria they were nearly as violent. At a

place about twenty-four miles from the city of Morocco, there is said

to have occurred a catastrophe much resembling what took place at the

Lisbon mole. A great fissure opened in the earth, and an entire village,

with all its inhabitants, upwards of 8,000 in number, were precipitated

into the gulf, which immediately closed over its prey.

EARTHQUAKES IN CALABRIA

Of the numerous other examples of destructive earthquakes which might

be chosen from Old World annals, it will not be amiss to append a brief

account of those which took place in Calabria, Italy, in 1783. These,

while less wide-spread in their influence, were much longer in duration

than the Lisbon cataclysm, since they continued, at intervals, from the

5th of February until the end of the year. The shocks were felt all over

Sicily and as far north as Naples, but the area of severe convulsion was

comparatively limited, not exceeding five hundred square miles.

The centre of disturbance seems to have been under the town of Oppido in

the farther Calabria, and it extended in every direction from that

spot to a distance of about twenty-two miles, with such violence as to

overthrow every city, town and village lying within that circle. This

ruin was accomplished by the first shock on the 5th of February. The

second, of equal violence, on the 28th of March, was less destructive,

only because little or nothing had been left for it to overthrow.

At Oppido the motion was in the nature of a vertical upheaval of the

ground, which was accompanied by the opening of numerous large chasms,

into some of which many houses were ingulfed, the chasms closing over

them again almost immediately. The town itself was situated on the

summit of a hill, flanked by five steep and difficult slopes; it was

so completely overthrown by the first shock that scarcely a fragment of

wall was left standing. The hill itself was not thrown down, but a fort

which commanded the approach to the place was hurled into the gorge

below. It was on the flats immediately surrounding the site of the town

and on the rising grounds beyond them that the great fissures and chasms

were opened. On the slope of one of the hills opposite the town there

appeared a vast chasm, in which a large quantity of soil covered with

vines and olive-trees was engulfed. This chasm remained open after the

shock, and was somewhat in the form of an amphitheatre, 500 feet long

and 200 feet in depth.

MOST CALAMITOUS OF THE LANDSLIPS

The most calamitous of the landslips occurred on the sea-coast of the

Straits of Messina, near the celebrated rock of Scilla, where huge

masses fell from the tall cliffs, overwhelming many villas and gardens.

At Gian Greco a continuous line of precipitous rocks, nearly a mile in

length, tumbled down. The aged Prince of Scilla, after the first great

shock on the 5th of February, persuaded many of his vassals to quit

the dangerous shore, and take refuge in the fishing boats--he himself

showing the example. That same night, however, while many of the people

were asleep in the boats, and others on a flat plain a little above the

sea-level, another powerful shock threw down from the neighboring Mount

Jaci a great mass, which fell with a dreadful crash, partly into the

sea, and partly upon the plain beneath. Immediately the sea rose to a

height of twenty feet above the level ground on which the people were

stationed, and rolling over it, swept away the whole multitude. This

immense wave then retired, but returned with still greater violence,

bringing with it the bodies of the men and animals it had previously

swept away, dashing to pieces the whole of the boats, drowning all that

were in them, and wafting the fragments far inland. The prince with

1,430 of his people perished by this disaster.

It was on the north-eastern shore of Sicily, however, that the greatest

amount of damage was done. The first severe shock, on the 5th of

February, overthrew nearly the whole of the beautiful city of Messina,

with great loss of life. The shore for a considerable distance along the

coast was rent, and the ground along the port, which was before quite

level, became afterwards inclined towards the sea, the depth of the

water having, at the same time, increased in several parts, through the

displacement of portions of the bottom. The quay also subsided about

fourteen inches below the level of the sea, and the houses near it

were much rent. But it was in the city itself that the most terrible

desolation was wrought--a complication of disasters having followed

the shock, more especially a fierce conflagration, whose intensity was

augmented by the large stores of oil kept in the place.

IMMENSE DESTRUCTION

According to official reports made soon after the events, the

destruction caused by the earthquakes of the 5th of February and 28th

of March throughout the two Calabrias was immense. About 320 towns

and villages were entirely reduced to ruins, and about fifty others

seriously damaged. The loss of life was appalling--40,000 having

perished by the earthquakes, and 20,000 more having subsequently died

from privation and exposure, or from epidemic diseases bred by the

stagnant pools and the decaying carcases of men and animals. The greater

number were buried amid the ruins of the houses, while others perished

in the fires that were kindled in most of the towns, particularly in

Oppido, where the flames were fed by great magazines of oil. Not a few,

especially among the peasantry dwelling in the country, were suddenly

engulfed in fissures. Many who were only half buried in the ruins, and

who might have been saved had there been help at hand, were left to

die a lingering death from cold and hunger. Four Augustine monks at

Terranuova perished thus miserably. Having taken refuge in a vaulted

sacristy, they were entombed in it alive by the masses of rubbish,

and lingered for four days, during which their cries for help could be

heard, till death put an end to their sufferings.

Of still more thrilling interest was the case of the Marchioness

Spastara. Having fainted at the moment of the first great shock, she was

lifted by her husband, who, bearing her in his arms, hurried with her to

the harbor. Here, on recovering her senses, she observed that her infant

boy had been left behind. Taking advantage of a moment when her husband

was too much occupied to notice her, she darted off and, running back

to the house, which was still standing, she snatched her babe from its

cradle. Rushing with him in her arms towards the staircase, she

found the stair had fallen--cutting off all further progress in that

direction. She fled from room to room, pursued by the falling materials,

and at length reached a balcony as her last refuge. Holding up her

infant, she implored the few passers-by for help; but they all, intent

on securing their own safety, turned a deaf ear to her cries. Meanwhile

the mansion had caught fire, and before long the balcony, with the

devoted lady still grasping her darling, was hurled into the devouring

flames.

CHAPTER XVII.

The Charleston and Other Earthquakes of the United States.

The twin continents of America have rivalled the record of the Old World

in their experience of earthquakes since their discovery in 1492. The

first of these made note of was in Venezuela in 1530, but they have been

numerous and often disastrous since. Among them was the great shock at

Lima in 1746, by which 18,000 were killed, and those at Guatemala in

1773, with 33,000, and at Riobamba in 1797, with 41,000 victims. It

will, however, doubtless prove of more interest to our readers if we

pass over these ruinous disasters and confine ourselves to the less

destructive earthquakes which have taken place within our own country.

The United States, large a section of North America as it occupies, is

fortunate in being in a great measure destitute of volcanic phenomena,

while destructive earthquakes have been very rare in its history. This,

it is true, does not apply to the United States as it is, but as it was.

It has annexed the volcano and the earthquake with its new accessions of

territory. Alaska has its volcanoes, the Philippines are subject to

both forms of convulsion, and in Hawaii we possess the most spectacular

volcano of the earth, while the earthquake is its common attendant.

But in the older United States the volcano contents itself with an

occasional puff of smoke, and eruptive phenomena are confined to the

minor form of the geyser.

We are by no means so free from the earthquake. Slight movements of the

earth’s surface are much more common than many of us imagine, and in

the history of our land there have been a number of earth shocks

of considerable violence. Prior to that of San Francisco, the most

destructive to life and property was that of Charleston in 1886, though

the 1812 convulsion in the Mississippi Valley might have proved a

much greater calamity but for the fact that civilized man had not then

largely invaded its centre of action.

As regards the number of earth movements in this country, we are told

that in New England alone 231 were recorded in two hundred and fifty

years, while doubtless many slighter ones were left unrecorded. Taking

the whole United States, there were 364 recorded in the twelve years

from 1872 to 1883, and in 1885 fifty-nine were recorded, more than

two-thirds of them being on the Pacific slope. Most of these, however,

were very slight, some of them barely perceptible.

Confining ourselves to those of the past important in their effects, we

shall first speak of the shocks which took place in New England in 1755,

in the year and month of the great earthquake at Lisbon. On the 18th of

November of that year, while the shocks at Lisbon still continued,

New England was violently shaken, loud underground explosive noises

accompanying the shocks. In the harbors along the Atlantic coast there

was much agitation of the waters and many dead fish were thrown up on

the shores. The shock, indeed, was felt far from the coast, by the

crew of a ship more than two hundred miles out at sea from Cape Ann,

Massachusetts.

This event, however, was of minor importance, being much inferior to

that of 1812, in which year California and the Mississippi Valley alike

were affected by violent movements of the earth’s crust. The California

convulsions took place in the spring and summer of that year, extending

from the beginning of May until September. Throughout May the southern

portion of that region was violently agitated, the shocks being so

frequent and severe that people abandoned their houses and slept on the

open ground. The most destructive shocks came in September, when two

Mission houses were destroyed and many of their inmates killed. At Santa

Barbara a tidal wave invaded the coast and flowed some distance into the

interior.

It may be said here that California has proved more subject to severe

shocks than any other section of our country. In 1865 sharp tremors

shook the whole region about the Bay of San Francisco, many buildings

being thrown down. Hardly any of brick or stone escaped injury, though

few lives were lost. In 1872 a disturbance was felt farther west, the

whole range of the Sierra Nevada mountains being violently shaken and

the earth tremblings extending into the State of Nevada. The centre of

activity was along the crest of the range, and immense quantities of

rock were thrown down from the mountain pinnacles. A tremendous fissure

opened along the eastern base of the mountain range for forty miles,

the land to the west of the opening rising and that to the east sinking

several feet. One small settlement, that of Lone Pine, in Owen’s Valley,

on the east base of the mountains, was completely demolished, from

twenty to thirty lives being lost. Luckily, the region affected had very

few inhabitants, or the calamity might have been great.

The earthquakes of 1812 in the Mississippi Valley began in December,

1811, and continued at intervals until 1813. As a rule they were more

distinguished by frequency than violence, though on several occasions

they were severe and had marked effects. They extended through

the valleys of the Mississippi, Arkansas and Ohio, and their long

continuance was remarkable in view of the territory affected being far

from any volcanic region.

The surface of the valley of the Mississippi was a good deal altered

by these convulsions--several new lakes being formed, while others were

drained. Several new islands were also raised in the river, and during

one of the shocks the ground a little below New Madrid was for a short

time lifted so high as to stop the current of the Mississippi, and cause

it to flow backward. The ground on which this town is built, and the

bank of the river for fifteen miles above it, subsided permanently about

eight feet, and the cemetery of the town fell into the river. In the

neighboring forest the trees were thrown into inclined positions in

every direction, and many of their trunks and branches were broken. It

is affirmed that in some places the ground swelled into great waves,

which burst at their summits and poured forth jets of water, along with

sand and pieces of coal, which were tossed as high as the tops of trees.

On the subsidence of these waves, there were left several hundreds

of hollow depressions from ten to thirty yards in diameter, and about

twenty feet in depth, which remained visible for many years afterward.

Some of the shocks were vertical, and others horizontal, the latter

being the most mischievous. These earthquakes resulted in the general

subsidence of a large tract of country, between seventy and eighty miles

in length from north to south, and about thirty miles in breadth from

east to west. Lakes now mark many of the localities affected by the

earthquake movements. It is only to the fact that this country was then

very thinly settled that a great loss of life was avoided.

New Madrid, Missouri, was a central point of this earthquake, the

shocks there being repeated with great frequency for several months.

The disturbance of the earth, however, was not confined to the United

States, but affected nearly half of the western hemisphere, ending

in the upheaval of Sabrina in the Azores, already described. The

destruction of Caracas, Venezuela, with many thousands of its

inhabitants, and the eruption of La Soufriere volcano of St. Vincent

Island were incidents of this convulsion. Dr. J. W. Foster tells us that

on the night of the disaster at Caracas the earthquake grew intense at

New Madrid, fissures being opened six hundred feet long by twenty broad,

from which water and sand were flung to the height of forty feet.

The most destructive of earthquakes in our former history was that which

visited Charleston, South Carolina, in 1886, the injury caused by it

being largely due to the fact that it passed through a populous city.

As it occurred after many of the people had retired, the confusion and

terror due to it were greatly augmented, people fleeing in panic fear

from the tumbling and cracking houses to seek refuge in the widest

streets and open spaces.

South Carolina had been affected by the wide-spread earthquakes of 1812.

These in some cases altered the level of the land, as is related in

Lyell’s “Principles of Geology.” But the effect then was much less than

in 1886. Several slight tremors occurred in the early summer of that

year, but did not excite much attention. More distinct shocks were felt

on August 27th and 28th, but the climax was deferred till the evening of

August 31st. The atmosphere that afternoon had been unusually sultry and

quiet, the breeze from the ocean, which generally accompanies the rising

tide, was almost entirely absent, and the setting sun caused a little

glow in the sky.

“As the hour of 9.50 was reached,” we are told, “there was suddenly

heard a rushing, roaring sound, compared by some to a train of cars

at no great distance, by others to a clatter produced by two or more

omnibuses moving at a rapid rate over a paved street, by others again,

to an escape of steam from a boiler. It was followed immediately by a

thumping and beating of the earth beneath the houses, which rocked

and swayed to and fro. Furniture was violently moved and dashed to the

floor; pictures were swung from the walls, and in some cases turned

with their backs to the front, and every movable thing was thrown

into extraordinary convulsions. The greatest intensity of the shock is

considered to have been during the first half, and it was probably

then, during the period of its greatest sway, that so many chimneys

were broken off at the junction of the roof. The duration of this severe

shock is thought to have been from thirty-five to forty seconds. The

impression produced on many was that it could be subdivided into three

distinct movements, while others were of the opinion that it was

one continuous movement, or succession of waves, with the greatest

intensity, as already stated, during the first half of its duration.”

Twenty-seven persons were killed outright, and more than that number

died soon after of their hurts or from exposure; many others were less

seriously injured. Among the buildings, the havoc, though much less

disastrous than has been recorded in some other earthquakes in either

hemisphere, was very great. “There was not a building in the city which

had escaped serious injury. The extent of the damage varied greatly,

ranging from total demolition down to the loss of chimney tops and the

dislodgment of more or less plastering. The number of buildings which

were completely demolished and levelled to the ground was not great; but

there were several hundreds which lost a large portion of their

walls. There were very many also which remained standing, but so badly

shattered that public safety required that they should be pulled down

altogether. There was not, so far as at present is known, a brick or

stone building which was not more or less cracked, and in most of them

the cracks were a permanent disfigurement and a source of danger

and inconvenience.” In some places the railway track was curiously

distorted. “It was often displaced laterally, and sometimes alternately

depressed and elevated. Occasionally several lateral flexures of double

curvature and of great amount were exhibited. Many hundred yards of

track had been shoved bodily to the south eastward.”

The ground was fissured at some places in the city to a depth of many

feet, and numerous “craterlets” were formed, from which sand was ejected

in considerable quantities. These are not uncommon phenomena, and were

due, no doubt, to the squirting of water out of saturated sandy layers

not far below the surface; these being squeezed between two less

pervious beds in the passage of the earthquake wave. The ejected

material in the Charleston earthquake was ordinary sand, such as

might exist in many districts which had been quite undisturbed by any

concussions of the earth.

Captain Dutton made a careful study of the observations collected

by himself and others concerning this earthquake, and came to the

conclusion that the Charleston wave traveled with unusual speed, for

its mean velocity was about 17,000 feet a second. The focus of the

disturbance was also ascertained. Apparently it was a double one, the

two centres being about thirteen miles apart, and the line joining

them running nearly the same distance to the west of Charleston. The

approximate depth of the principal focus is given as twelve miles,

with a possible error of less than two miles; that of the minor one as

roughly eight miles.

The Charleston earthquake was felt as a tremor of more or less force

through a wide area, embracing 900,000 square miles, and affecting

nearly the whole country east of the Mississippi. It is said that the

yield of the Pennsylvania natural gas wells decreased, and that a geyser

in the Yellowstone valley burst into action after four years of rest.

The movement of the earth-wave was in general north and south, deflected

to east and west, and the snake-like fashion in which rails on the

railroad were bent indicated both a vertical and a lateral force.

This earthquake has been attributed to various causes, but geological

experts think that it was due to a slip in the crust along the

Appalachian Mountain chain. There is a line of weakness along the

eastern slope of this chain, characterized by fissures and faults, and

it was thought that a strain had been gradually brought to bear upon

this through the removal of earth from the land by rains and rivers and

its deposition in thick strata on the sea-bottom. It is supposed that

this variation in weight in time caused a yielding of the strata and a

slip seaward of the great coastal plain. Professor Mendenhall, however,

thinks it was due to a readjustment of the earth’s crust to its

gradually sinking nucleus.

CHAPTER XVIII.

The Volcano and the Earthquake, Earth’s Demons of Destruction.

To most of us, dwellers upon the face of the earth, this terrestrial

sphere is quite a comfortable place of residence. The forces of Nature

everywhere and at all times surround us, forces capable, if loosened

from their bonds, of bringing death and destruction to man and the work

of his hands. But usually they are mild and beneficent in their action,

not agents of destruction and lords of elemental misrule. The air,

without whose presence we could not survive a minute, is usually a

pleasant companion, now resting about us in soft calm, now passing by in

mild breezes. The alternation of summer and winter is to us generally an

agreeable relief from the monotony of a uniform climate. The variation

from sunlight to cloud, from dry weather to rainfall, is equally viewed

as a pleasant escape from the weariness of too great fixity of natural

conditions. The change from day to night, from hours of activity to

hours of slumber, are other agreeable variations in the events of our

daily life. In short, a great pendulum seems to be swinging above us,

held in Nature’s kindly hand, and adapting its movements to our best

good and highest enjoyment.

But has Nature,--if we are justified in personifying the laws and forces

of the universe,--has mother Nature really our pleasure and benefit in

mind, or does she merely suffer us to enjoy life like so many summer

insects, until she is in the mood to sweep us like leaves from her

path? It must seem the latter to many of the inhabitants of the earth,

especially to the dwellers in certain ill-conditioned regions. For all

the beneficent powers above named may at a moment’s notice change to

destructive ones.

THE WIND IS A DEMON IN CHAINS

The wind, for instance, is a demon in chains. At times it breaks its

fetters and rushes on in mad fury, rending and destroying, and sweeping

such trifles as cities and those who dwell therein to common ruin.

Sunshine and rain are subject to like wild caprices. The sun may pour

down burning rays for weeks and months together, scorching the fertile

fields, drying up the life-giving streams, bringing famine and misery

to lands of plenty and comfort, almost making the blood to boil in our

veins. Its antithesis, the rainstorm, is at times a still more terrible

visitant. From the dense clouds pour frightful floods, rushing down

the lofty hills, sweeping over fertile plains, overflowing broad river

valleys, and, wherever they go, leaving terror and death in their path.

We may say the same of the alternation of the seasons. Summer, while

looked forward to with joyous anticipation, may bring us only

suffering by its too ardent grasp; and winter, often welcomed with like

pleasurable anticipations, may prove a period of terror from cold and

destitution.

Such is the make-up of the world in which we live, such the vagaries of

the forces which surround us. But those enumerated are not the whole.

Can we say, with a stamp of the foot upon the solid earth, “Here at

least I have something I can trust; let the winds blow and the rains

descend, let the summer scorch and the winter chill, the good earth

still stands firm beneath me, and of it at least I am sure?”

Who says so speaks hastily and heedlessly, for the earth can show itself

as unstable as the air, and our solid footing become as insecure as the

deck of a ship laboring in a storm at sea. The powers of the atmosphere,

great as they are and mighty for destruction as they may become, are at

times surpassed by those which abide within the earth, deep laid in the

so-called everlasting rocks, slumbering often through generations, but

at any time likely to awaken in wrath, to lift the earth into quaking

billows like those of the sea, or pour forth torrents of liquid fire

that flow in glowing and burning rivers over leagues of ruined land.

Such is the earth with which we have to deal, such the ruthless powers

of nature that spread around us and lurk beneath us, such the terrific

forces which only bide their time to break forth and sweep too-confident

man from the earth’s smiling face.

THE SUBTERRANEAN POWERS

The subterranean powers here spoken of, those we had denominated earth’s

demons of destruction, are the volcano and the earthquake, the great

moulding forces of the earth, tearing down to rebuild, rending to

reconstitute, and in this elemental work often bringing ruin to man’s

boasted fanes and palaces.

No one who has ever seen a volcano or “burning mountain” casting forth

steam, huge red-hot stones, smoke, cinders and lava, can possibly forget

the grandeur of the spectacle. At night it is doubly terrible, when

the darkness shows the red-hot lava rolling in glowing streams down

the mountain’s side. At times, indeed, the volcano is quiet, and only

a little smoke curls from its top. Even this may cease, and the once

burning summit may be covered over with trees and grass, like any other

hill. But deep down in the earth the gases and pent-up steam, are ever

preparing to force their way upward through the mountain, and to carry

with them dissolved rocks, and the stones which block their passage.

Sometimes, while all is calm and beautiful on the mountains, suddenly

deep-sounding noises are heard, the ground shakes, and a vast torrent

tears its way through the bowels of the volcano, and is flung hundreds

of feet high in the air, and, falling again to the earth, destroys every

living thing for miles around.

It is the same with the earthquake as with the volcano. The surface of

the earth is never quite still. Tremors are constantly passing onward

which can be distinguished by delicate instruments, but only rarely are

these of sufficient force to become noticeable, except by instrumental

means. At intervals, however, the power beneath the surface raises

the ground in long, billow-like motions, before which, when of violent

character, no edifice or human habitation can for a moment stand. The

earth is frequently rent asunder, great fissures and cavities being

formed. The course of rivers is changed and the waters are swallowed up

by fissures rent in the surface, while ruin impends in a thousand

forms. The cities become death pits and the cultivated fields are buried

beneath floods of liquid mud. Fortunately these convulsions, alike of

the earthquake and volcano, are comparative rarities and are confined

to limited regions of the earth’s surface. What do we know of those

deep-lying powers, those vast buried forces dwelling in uneasy isolation

beneath our feet? With all our science we are but a step beyond the

ancients, to whom these were the Titans, great rebel giants whom Jupiter

overthrew and bound under the burning mountains, and whose throes of

agony shook the earth in quaking convulsions. To us the volcanic crater

is the mouth from which comes the fiery breath of demon powers which

dwell far down in the earth’s crust. The Titans themselves were dwarfs

beside these mighty agents of destruction whose domain extends for

thousands of miles beneath the earth’s surface and which in their

convulsions shake whole continents at once. Such was the case in 1812,

when the eruption of Mont Soufriere on St. Vincent, as told in a later

chapter, formed merely the closing event in a series of earthquakes

which had made themselves felt under thousands of miles of land.

ANCIENT AWE OF VOLCANOES

In olden times volcanoes were regarded with superstitious awe, and it

would have been considered highly impious to make any investigation of

their actions. We are told by Virgil that Mt. Etna marks the spot where

the gods in their anger buried Enceladus, one of the rebellious giants.

To our myth-making ancestors one of the volcanoes of the Mediterranean,

set on a small island of the Lipari group, was the workshop of Vulcan,

the god of fire, within whose depths he forged the thunderbolts of the

gods. From below came sounds as of a mighty hammer on a vast anvil.

Through the mountain vent came the black smoke and lurid glow from

the fires of Vulcan’s forge. This old myth is in many respects more

consonant with the facts of nature than myths usually are. In agreement

with the theory of its internal forces, the mountain in question was

given the name of Volcano. To-day it is scarcely known at all, but its

name clings to all the fire-breathing mountains of the earth.

As before said, at the present day we are little in advance of the

ancients in actual knowledge of what is going on so far beneath our

feet. We speak of forces where they spoke of fettered giants, but can

only form theories where they formed myths. Is the earth’s centre made

up of liquid fire? Does its rock crust resemble the thick ice crust on

the Arctic Seas, or is the earth, as later scientists believe, solid to

the core? Is it heated so fiercely, miles below our feet, that at every

release of pressure the solid rock bursts into molten lava? Is the steam

from the contact of underground rivers and deep-lying fires the origin

of the terrible rending powers of the volcano’s depths? Truly we can

answer none of these questions with assurance, and can only guess

and conjecture from the few facts open to us what lies concealed far

beneath.

RARITY OF ANCIENT ACCOUNTS

In the history of earthquakes nothing is more remarkable than the

extreme fewness of those recorded before the beginning of the Christian

era, in comparison with those that have been registered since that time.

It is to be borne in mind, however, that before the birth of Christ only

a small portion of the globe was inhabited by those likely to make a

record of natural events. The vast apparent increase in the number

of earthquakes in recent times is owing to a greater knowledge of

the earth’s surface and to the spread of civilization over lands once

inhabited by savages. The same is to be said of volcanic eruptions,

which also have apparently increased greatly since the beginning of the

Christian era. There may possibly have been a natural increase in these

phenomena, but this is hardly probable, the change being more likely due

to the increase in the number of observers.

The structure of a volcano is very different from that of other

mountains, really consisting of layers of lava and volcanic ashes,

alternating with each other and all sloping away from the center. These

elevations, in fact, are formed in a different manner from ordinary

mountains. The latter have been uplifted by the influence of pressure in

the interior of the earth, but the volcano is an immediate result of the

explosive force of which we have spoken, the mountain being gradually

built up by the lava and other materials which it has flung up from

below. In this way mountains of immense height and remarkable regularity

have been formed. Mount Orizabo, near the City of Mexico, for instance,

is a remarkably regular cone, undoubtedly formed in this way, and the

same may be said of Mount Mayon, on the Island of Luzon.

In many cases the irregularity of the volcano is due to subsequent

action of its forces, which may blow the mountain itself to pieces.

In the case of Krakatoa, in the East Indies, for instance, the whole

mountain was rent into fragments, which were flung as dust miles high

into the air. The main point we wish to indicate is that volcanoes are

never formed by ordinary elevating forces and that they differ in this

way from all other mountains. On the contrary, they have been piled up

like rubbish heaps, resembling the small mountains of coal dust near the

mouths of anthracite mines.

It is to the burning heat of the earth’s crust and the influence of

pressure, and more largely to the influx of water to the molten rocks

which lie miles below the surface, that these convulsions of nature are

due. Water, on reaching these overheated strata, explodes into volumes

of steam, and if there is no free vent to the surface, it is apt to rend

the very mountain asunder in its efforts to escape. Such is supposed

to have been the case in the eruption of Krakatoa, and was probably the

case also in the recent case of Mt. Pelee.

GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF ERUPTIONS

If we should seek to give a general description of volcanic eruptions,

it would be in some such words as follows: An eruption is usually

preceded by earthquakes which affect the whole surrounding country,

and associated with which are underground explosions that seem like

the sound of distant artillery. The mountain quivers with internal

convulsions, due to the efforts of its confined forces to find an

opening. The drying up of wells and disappearance of springs are apt to

take place, the water sinking downward through cracks newly made in the

rocks. Finally the fierce unchained energy rends an opening through the

crater and an eruption begins. It comes usually with a terrible burst

that shakes the mountain to its foundation; explosions following rapidly

and with increasing violence, while steam issues and mounts upward in

a lofty column. The steam and escaping gases in their fierce outbreaks

hurl up into the air great quantities of solid rock torn from the sides

of the opening. The huge blocks, meeting each other in their rise and

fall, are gradually broken and ground into minute fragments, forming

dust or so-called ashes, often of extreme fineness, and in such

quantities as frequently to blot out the light of the sun. There is

another way in which a great deal of volcanic dust is made; the lava is

full of steam, which in its expansion tears the molten rock into atoms,

often converting it into the finest dust.

The eruption of Mt. Skaptar, in Iceland, in 1783, sent up such volumes

of dust that the atmosphere was loaded with it for months, and it

was carried to the northern part of Scotland, 600 miles away, in such

quantities as to destroy the crops. During the eruption of Tomboro, in

the East Indies, in 1815, so great was the quantity of dust thrown up

that it caused darkness at midday in Java 300 miles away and covered the

ground to a depth of several inches. Floating pumice formed a layer

on the ocean surface two and a half feet in thickness, through which

vessels had difficulty in forcing their way.

The steam which rises in large volumes into the air may become suddenly

condensed with the chill of the upper atmosphere and fall as rain,

torrents of which often follow an eruption. The rain, falling through

the clouds of volcanic dust, brings it to the earth as liquid mud, which

pours in thick streams down the sides of the mountain. The torrents of

flowing mud are sometimes on such a great scale that large towns, as in

the instance of the great city of Herculaneum, may be completely buried

beneath them. Over this city the mud accumulated to the depth of over 70

feet. In addition to these phenomena, molten lava often flows from the

lip of the crater, occasionally in vast quantities. In the Icelandic

eruption of 1783 the lava streams were so great in quantity as to fill

river gorges 600 ft. deep and 200 ft. wide, and to extend over an open

plain to a distance of 12 to 15 miles, forming lakes of lava 100 feet

deep. The volcanoes of Hawaii often send forth streams of lava which

cover an area of over 100 square miles to a great depth.

GREAT OUTFLOWS OF LAVA

In the course of ages lava outflows of this kind have built up in Hawaii

a volcanic mountain estimated to contain enough material to cover the

whole of the United States with a layer of rock 50 feet deep. These

great outflows of lava are not confined to mountains, but take place now

and then from openings in the ground, or from long cracks in the surface

rocks. Occasionally great eruptions have taken place beneath the

ocean’s surface, throwing up material in sufficient quantity to form new

islands.

The formation of mud is not confined to the method given, but great

quantities of this plastic material flow at times from volcanic craters.

In the year 1691 Imbaburu, one of the peaks of the Andes, sent out

floods of mud which contained dead fish in such abundance that their

decay caused a fever in the vicinity. The volcanoes of Java have often

buried large tracts of fertile country under volcanic mud.

An observation of volcanoes shows us that they have three well marked

phases of action. The first of these is the state of permanent eruption,

as in case of the volcano of Stromboli in the Mediterranean. This state

is not a dangerous one, since the steam, escaping continually, acts as

a safety valve. The second stage is one of milder activity with an

occasional somewhat violent eruption; this is apt to be dangerous,

though not often very greatly so. The safety valve is partly out of

order. The third phase is one in which long periods of repose, sometimes

lasting for centuries, are followed by eruptions of intense energy.

These are often of extreme violence and cause widespread destruction. In

this case the safety valve has failed to work and the boiler bursts.

OFTEN REST FOR LONG TERMS OF YEARS

Such are the general features of action in the vast powers which

dwell deep beneath the surface, harmless in most parts of the earth,

frightfully perilous in others. Yet even here they often rest for long

terms of years in seeming apathy, until men gather above their lurking

places in multitudes, heedless or ignorant of the sleeping demons that

bide their time below. Their time is sure to come, after years, perhaps

after centuries. Suddenly the solid earth begins to tremble and quake;

roars as of one of the buried giants of old strike all men with dread;

then, with a fierce convulsion, a mountain is rent in twain and vast

torrents of steam, burning rock, and blinding dust are hurled far upward

into the air, to fall again and bury cities, perhaps, with all their

inhabitants in indiscriminate ruin and death.

CHAPTER XIX.

Theories of Volcanic and Earthquake Action.

Though the first formation of a volcano (Italian, vulcano, from Vulcan,

the Roman god of fire) has seldom been witnessed, it would seem that it

is marked by earthquake movements followed by the opening of a rent or

fissure; but with no such tilting up of the rocks as was once supposed

to take place. From this fissure large volumes of steam issue,

accompanied by hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, hydrochloric

acid, and sulphur dioxide. The hydrogen, apparently derived from the

dissociation of water at a high temperature, flashes explosively into

union with atmospheric oxygen, and, having exerted its explosive force,

the steam condenses into cloud, heavy masses of which overhang the

volcano, pouring down copious rains. This naturally disturbs the

electrical condition of the atmosphere, so that thunder and lightning

are frequent accompaniments of an eruption. The hydrochloric acid

probably points to the agency of sea-water. Besides the gases just

mentioned, sulphuretted hydrogen, ammonia and common salt occur; but

mainly as secondary products, formed by the union of the vapors issuing

from the volcano, and commonly found also in the vapors rising from

cooling lava streams or dormant volcanic districts. It is important to

notice that the vapors issue from the volcano spasmodically, explosions

succeeding each other with great rapidity and noise.

All substances thrown out by the volcano, whether gaseous, liquid or

solid, are conveniently united under the term ejectamenta (Latin, things

thrown out), and all of them are in an intensely heated, if not an

incandescent state. Most of the gases are incombustible, but the

hydrogen and those containing sulphur burn with a true flame, perhaps

rendered more visible by the presence of solid particles. Much of the

so-called flame, however, in popular descriptions of eruptions is

an error of observation due to the red-hot solid particles and the

reflection of the glowing orifice on the over-hanging clouds.

ENORMOUS FORCE DISPLAYED

Solid bodies are thrown into the air with enormous force and to

proportionally great heights, those not projected vertically falling in

consequence at considerable distances from the volcano. A block weighing

200 tons is said to have been thrown nine miles by Cotopaxi; masses

of rock weighing as much as twenty tons to have been ejected by

Mount Ararat in 1840; and stones to have been hurled to a distance

of thirty-six miles in other cases. The solid matter thrown out by

volcanoes consists of lapilli, scoriae, dust and bombs.

Though on the first formation of the volcano, masses of non-volcanic

rock may be torn from the chimney or pipe of the mountain, only slightly

fused externally owing to the bad conducting power of most rocks,

and hurled to a distance; and though at the beginning of a subsequent

eruption the solid plug of rock which has cooled at the bottom of the

crater, or, in fact, any part of the volcano, may be similarly blown up,

the bulk of the solid particles of which the volcano itself is composed

is derived from the lake of lava or molten rock which seethes at the

orifice. Solid pieces rent from this fused mass and cast up by the

explosive force of the steam with which the lava is saturated are known

as lapilli. Cooling rapidly so as to be glassy in texture externally,

these often have time to become perfectly crystalline within.

Gases and steam escaping from other similar masses may leave them

hollow, when they are termed bombs, or may pit their surfaces with

irregular bubble-cavities, when they are called scoriae or scoriaceous.

Such masses whirling through the air in a plastic state often become

more or less oblately spheroidal in form; but, as often, the explosive

force of their contained vapors shatters them into fragments, producing

quantities of the finest volcanic dust or sand. This fine dust darkens

the clouds overhanging the mountain, mixes with the condensed steam to

fall as a black mud-rain, or lava di aqua (Italian, water lava), or

is carried up to enormous heights, and then slowly diffused by upper

currents of the atmosphere. In the eruption of Vesuvius of A.D. 79, the

air was dark as midnight for twelve or fifteen miles round; the city of

Pompeii was buried beneath a deposit of dry scoriae, or ashes and dust,

and Herculaneum beneath a layer of the mud-like lava di aqua, which on

drying sets into a compact rock. Rocks formed from these fragmentary

volcanic materials are known as tuff.

VOLCANIC CONES HAVE SIMILAR CURVATURES

It is entirely of these cindery fragments heaped up with marvellous

rapidity round the orifice that the volcano itself is first formed. It

may, as in the case of Jorullo in Mexico in 1759, form a cone several

hundred feet high in less than a day. Such a cone may have a slope as

steep as 30 or 40 degrees, its incline in all cases depending simply on

the angle of repose of its materials; the inclination, that is, at which

they stop rolling. The great volcanoes of the Andes, which are formed

mainly of ash, are very steep. Owing to a general similarity in their

materials, volcanic cones in all parts of the world have very similar

curvatures; but older volcanic mountains, in which lava-streams have

broken through the cone, secondary cones have arisen, or portions

have been blown up, are more irregular in outline and more gradual in

inclination.