HOW THEY SWALLOWED UP LARGE CITIES AND HOSTS OF PEOPLE.
ONE of the most remarkable earthquakes of antiquity overthrew many cities of Italy but did not interrupt the battle of Thrasimene, which was raging at that time. This was in the year 217 B. C. Byron sings of the event in "Childe Harold:"—
"And such the storm of battle on this day,
And such the frenzy whose convulsion blinds
To all save carnage, that beneath the fray
An earthquake rolled unheedingly away!
None felt stern nature rocking at his feet
And yawning forth a grave for those who lay
Upon their bucklers for a winding-sheet;
Such is the absorbing hate when warring nations
meet."
In 365 A. D., the greater part of the Roman world was convulsed by an earthquake, which was followed by tidal waves. For a long time afterward the city of Alexandria annually commemorated the fatal day when 50,000 citizens lost their lives in an inundation. Two centuries later the Roman Empire again was shaken, and credulity is staggered by the statement that 250,000 lives were lost.
One shrinks from enumerating many of the great earthquakes of history, for to attempt the task is to sup full of horrors. In the early history of America the disappearance of whole cities was not unusual. In 1456, 60,000 persons were killed in Naples. In 1759 there were destructive shocks in Syria, and at Balbec 20,000 perished. In 1783 Guatemala, with all its riches and 8,000 families, was swallowed up. In Sicily and Calabria, from 1783 to 1786 the victims reached a total of 80,000. China's capital was destroyed in 1833, and multitudes were killed in a series of shocks that were distributed through ten years. And so on until the statistics become sickening.
The great Lisbon earthquake of 1755 will be remembered as the one in which the good Dr. Johnson refused to believe, although he pinned his faith to the story of the Cock Lane ghost. This shock extended over a surface of the globe four times greater than that of Europe, destroying the cities of Fez and Mesquinez in Morocco, with 15,000 persons; and affecting the coasts of Greenland, the Isle of Madeira, and the West Indies, nearly 4,000 miles away. In Lisbon it was All-Saints' Day, the hour of high mass, and the churches were crowded. There were three shocks, and then the city was in ruins. The earthquake was followed by the horrors of a conflagration.
In the Caracas earthquake in 1812 the people were praying, like those of Lisbon, when desolation came upon them. It was Thursday of Holy Week and great numbers were in the churches. At least 4,000 people perished in the downfall of the sacred edifices. One cathedral only held out.—Boseowitz, on Earthquakes.