These violent convulsions that from time to time shake and rend the
earth, are among the most terrible calamities that come upon men,
causing immense destruction of property and of life. Their occurrence
is often most unexpected.
Villages, cities, and whole districts of densely populated countries
sink beneath a sudden stroke, overwhelmed in a common ruin. If any
warning is given, the alarming premonitions rather confuse and paralyze
effort, because, with the appalling certainty of disaster, there is
nothing to show in what form it will come, or to indicate a place of
refuge.
While the recent horrors at Ischia and in Java excite much painful
interest in the public mind, they naturally recall similar scenes
of other years. Earthquakes of less destructive violence are very
frequent, and suggest greater power than is exerted. Even the slight
trembling, or vibratory motions, that produce no material injury,
remind us of the prodigious forces that may at any moment burst their
barriers with great violence.
In every perceptible shock we feel the mighty pulsations of the
agitated molten mass whose waves dash against the walls that restrain
them; or the struggling of compressed elastic gases, that must have
vent, though their escape rend the earth. The crust between us and the
seas of fire, whose extent no man knoweth, may be in places weakening,
cut away, as the inner walls of a furnace by the molten metal; so the
danger may be nearer and greater than is known or feared. A devout
man finds refuge and a comfortable assurance in the truth, “The Lord
reigneth; in his hands are the deep places of the earth. The strength
of the hills is his also.”
There are records of earthquakes more ancient than any books written
by men. They antedate the earliest chapters of human history, and
probably belonged to the pre-adamite earth. If no human ear heard their
tread, the footprints are still visible. In all mountainous regions
the evidence of their upheaval by some mighty force is too plain to be
doubted. The marine fossils found far up on their heights, the position
of strata, often far from horizontal, with immense fissures, and chasms
of unknown depth, all tell of disturbances that may have taken place
before the historic period. If in those primitive times mountains were
literally carried into the midst of the sea, and vast tracts of the
ocean’s bed shoved up thousands of feet, it was only a more terrible
display of the gigantic powers still in action, and of whose workings
the centuries have borne witness.
No country seems to have escaped these terrible visitations, though
some suffer more than others. Volcanoes being of the same origin, they
are more frequent in volcanic regions, and perhaps by their shocks the
seething caldrons have been uncovered.
The same localities, as Southern Italy, and the neighboring island of
Sicily, have, from a remote period, at times been terribly shaken. From
1783 to 1786 a thousand shocks were made note of, five hundred of which
are described as having much force. Lyell considers them of special
importance, not because differing from like disturbances in other
places, but because observed and minutely described by men competent to
collect and state such physical facts in a way to show their bearing on
the science of the earth. The following, collected from Lyell, Gibbon,
Humboldt, and the encyclopædias, are facts respecting some of the
principal earthquakes on record. Their statements, much condensed, are
not given in chronological order, but as we find them:
In 115, of the Christian era, Antioch in Syria, “Queen of the East,”
beautiful in itself, and beautiful for situation, a city of two hundred
thousand inhabitants, was utterly ruined by earthquake. Afterward
rebuilt, in more than all its ancient splendor, by Trajan, the tide of
life and wealth again flowed into it, and for centuries we read of no
serious disasters of the kind. All apprehension of danger removed, the
people became famous for luxurious refinements, and, strangely enough,
seem to have united high intellectual qualities with a passionate
fondness for amusements. In 458 the city was again terribly shaken,
and twice in the sixth century. Each time the destruction was nearly
complete; but each time, in less than a century, the city was restored
again, but only to stand until 1822, and from that overthrow it has
never recovered, being now a miserable town of only six thousand
inhabitants. The destruction of five populous cities, on one site,
involved a fearful loss of life. Probably more than half a million
thus perished. The most destructive earthquake in that, or any other
locality, of which we find any mention, was in 562. An immense number
of strangers being in attendance at the festival of the Ascension,
added to the multitudes belonging to the city. Gibbon estimates that
two hundred and fifty thousand persons were buried in the ruins.
Among the earliest accounts of earthquakes having particular interest,
is the familiar one of that which destroyed Herculaneum and Pompeii
in the year 63—about sixteen years before those cities were buried in
scoria and ashes from Vesuvius.
Of modern earthquakes three or four are here mentioned as presenting
some interesting phenomena. That of Chili, in 1822, caused the
permanent elevation of the country between the Andes and the coast. The
area thus raised is estimated at one hundred thousand square miles, and
the elevation from two to seven feet. Shore lines, at higher levels,
indicate several previous upheavals of the same region, along about the
same lines. The opposite of this, a depression of land, was occasioned
in the island of Jamaica in 1692, when Port Royal, the capital, was
overwhelmed. A thousand acres or more thus sank in less than one
minute, the sea rolling in and driving the vessels that were in the
harbor over the tops of the houses.
The earthquake of New Madrid, below St. Louis, on the Mississippi,
was in 1811, and interesting as an instance of successive shocks, and
almost incessant quaking of the ground for months, and at a distance
from any volcano. The agitation of the earth in Missouri continued
till near the time of the destruction of the city of Caracas, in South
America, and then ceased. One evening, about this time, is described by
the inhabitants of New Madrid as cloudless, and peculiarly brilliant.
The western sky was a continual glare from vivid flashes of lightning,
and peals of thunder were incessantly heard, apparently proceeding,
as did the flashes, from below the horizon. Comparatively little harm
was done in Missouri, but the beautiful city of Caracas, with its
splendid churches and palatial homes, was made a heap of ruins, beneath
which twelve thousand of its inhabitants were buried. Just how these
events were related we know not. Whether the same pent-up forces that
were struggling in vain to escape in the valley of the Mississippi,
found vent in that distant locality, God only knows. The supposition
allowed may account for the relief that came to the greatly troubled
New Madrid. The evils they dreaded came but in part—enough only to
suggest the greater perils they escaped. Over an extent of country
three hundred miles in length fissures were opened in the ground
through which mud and water were thrown, high as the tops of the trees.
From the mouth of the Ohio to the St. Francis the ground rose and fell
in great undulations. Lakes were formed and drained again, and the
general surface so lowered that the country along the White River and
its tributaries, for a distance of seventy miles, is known as “the sunk
country.” Flint, the geographer, seven years after the event, noticed
hundreds of chasms then closed and partially filled. They may yet, in
places, be traced, having the appearance of artificial trenches.
Fissures are occasionally met in different parts of the country, which
extend through solid rock to a great depth. “The Rocks” at Panama, N.
Y., have been elsewhere described, and furnish a profitable study.
A more remarkable chasm of this kind extends from the western base of
the Shawangunk Mountain, near Ellenville, Ulster County, N. Y., for
about a mile to the summit. At first one can easily step across the
fissure, but further up it becomes wider, till the hard vertical walls
of sandstone are separated by a gorge several feet wide, and of great
depth. At the top an area of a hundred acres or more is rent in every
direction, the continuity of the surface being interrupted by steps
of rocks, presenting abrupt walls. The gorge traced up the mountain
becomes a frightful abyss, more than a hundred feet wide. Among the
loose stones at the bottom large trees are growing, whose tops scarce
reach half way to the edge of the precipice. Most such disruptions
of rocks and mountains were doubtless caused by earthquakes at some
unknown period.
The great earthquake at Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, was in 1755.
“The ominous rumbling sound below the surface was almost immediately
followed by the shock which threw down the principal part of the city;
in the short space of six minutes, it is believed, 60,000 perished. The
sea rolled back, leaving the bar dry, and then returned, in a great
tidal wave, fifty feet, or more, in height. The mountains around were
shaken with great violence, their rocks rent, and thrown in fragments
into the valley below. Multitudes of people rushed from their falling
buildings to the marble quay, which suddenly sank with them, like a
ship foundering at sea; and when the waters closed over the place no
fragments of the wreck—none of the vessels near by, that were drawn
into the whirlpool, and not one of the thousands of the bodies that
were carried down ever appeared again. Over the spot occupied by the
quay, the water stood six hundred feet deep; and beneath it, locked in
fissured rocks, and in chasms of unknown depth, lie what was the life
and wealth of the place, in the middle of the eighteenth century.”
Earthquakes, of especial interest, from their recent occurrence and
destructive effects, are those of 1857-58, in the kingdom of Naples,
and in Mexico; but we have not room to more than mention them. The
past summer will be remembered as the period of at least two terrible
disasters from earthquakes, in localities distant from each other.
The first, July 28, was at Ischia, a beautiful island at the north
entrance of the bay of Naples. The principal town, Cassamicciola, was
mostly destroyed, and much injury done at other places. The town was
a noted health resort, and it is feared many distinguished strangers
perished in it. The shocks began in the night, when a majority of the
citizens, who frequent such places, were in the theater, and the scene
there was terrible. Lamps were overturned; clouds of dust arose, and
then the walls of the building opened, and fell, giving no opportunity
for escape. The ground opened in many places, and houses and their
inhabitants were swallowed up. The hotel Picola Sentinella sank into
the earth, with all its inmates. The number destroyed, first estimated
at three thousand, was much larger, but how much is not yet certainly
known. Years must elapse before the town is restored, when it will be
with a new class of inhabitants.
The sad tidings of disaster in Italy were soon followed by still more
startling intelligence from Java, where, as in regions bordering on
the Mediterranean, earthquakes are not a new experience with the
inhabitants. A recital of the calamities occurring in Java during
the last century would make a gloomy chapter in history, suggesting
the insecurity and transitory nature of all earthly possessions. The
island is one of the largest and, commercially, most important, in the
Indian archipelago, six hundred and sixty miles in length, and the
width varying from forty to one hundred and thirty miles. It is densely
populated, and governed by a Dutch viceroy. In the mountain range
extending through the center, with a mean elevation of seven thousand
feet, are many volcanoes; and earthquakes are of frequent occurrence,
as in other volcanic regions. In 1878 record was made of some sixteen,
in different parts of the island. One of the most famous, accompanied
by a vast eruption of Papandayang, the largest of the volcanoes,
took place a hundred years ago, overwhelming an area of a hundred
square miles, and destroying three thousand people—the island at that
time having fewer inhabitants. There were two similar eruptions from
volcanoes at the same time, respectively one hundred and thirty-four
and three hundred and fifty-two miles from Papandayang, suggesting the
fact that the power of producing them, and the earthquakes, may operate
through a field of vast extent, and breaks through where the barriers
give way. It is safe to say both have the same origin.
Ischia and Java, though almost antipodes, are companions in disaster,
and possibly felt the dashing of the same billows, striking with
violence here or there, according as some mighty impulse drove them
on. The great calamities of the past summer, besides their appeal to
our humanity, will be of interest to scientific men, and may throw
light on the relations of earthquakes and volcanoes, and their cause,
after which they have been searching a good deal in the dark, and with
results not yet satisfactory.
The accounts of the last fearful disaster are yet incomplete, and may
not all be verified. The latest, and apparently most reliable reports,
place it among the most terrible calamities known in the history of
the race, since the deluge. The earth trembled and shook—rocks were
rent—buildings tumbled in ruins. A large part of the city, full of
wealth and life, sank out of sight. Tidal waves carried destruction
along the coast. Volcanoes belched forth smoke, ashes and lava,
overspreading fertile valleys; and when the sulphurous clouds that hung
over them, black as night, were lifted, turbulent waters rolled over
fifty square miles of pasture lands that the day before were covered
with flocks, and the homes of men. It is estimated that seventy-five
thousand people perished. It may be a few thousand less, or more,
as there are yet no data from which to form more than a proximate
estimate. The whole number will not be known till the graves and the
sea give up their dead.