Morris's story of the great earthquake of 1908, and other historic disasters

Book I

CONTAINS A COMPLETE AND ACCURATE ACCOUNT OF THE GREAT ITALIAN AND SICILIAN EARTH- QUAKE AND TIDAL WAVE OF 1908, one of the most fearful disasters nature ever visited upon the human race, in which more lives were lost, in a few ill-fated minutes, than Russia lost in battle during her war with Japan. A compendium of thrilling accounts given by eye-witnesses who escaped death, and those engaged in the noble work of relief, the whole being a picture of tragic pathos, before which civilization stands in fascinated awe. Pompeii of old, and San Francisco's great disaster pale into insignificance beside its frightful loss of life.

Book II

INCLUDES A GRAPHIC STORY OF ALL GREAT EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS IN THE WORLD'S HISTORY, TOGETHER WITH SCIEN- TIFIC EXPLANATIONS OF THEIR CAUSES.

—EDITED BY— ' '-„»

CHARLES MORRIS

The well-known Historian, Encyclopedist and Scientist. Author of "An Historical Review of Civilization;" "The Greater Republic;" "Decisive Events in American History;" "Man and His Ancestors; ' "The Volcano's Deadly Work;" "The San Francisco Calamity;" "Half-Hours with Best American Authors;" Associate Editor on Encyclopedias, etc., etc. Member of the Pennsylvania Academy of Natural Sciences and tlie Geographical Society of Philadelphia.

NEARLY lOO 1 1. L U ST B. ATI ON S

MADE ESPECLA.LLY FOR THIS WORK, SHOWING THE HAVOC CAUSED BY FIRE, EARTHQUAKE AND VOLCANIC CONVULSIONS

LIBRARY of congress] Two CoDies Receded

Copyright, 1909, by E. M. ScxJix.

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Preface

TACITUS relates how the palaces and noble residences of the beautiful and ancient city of Pompeii were buried in ashes fathoms deep when Vesuvius awoke in its wrath ; and sacred history reveals the fate of the doomed Cities of the Plain when a rain of fire and brimstone poured down upon their spires and domes. No record of the past comes to us in more appalling form than these stories of sudden ruin and tferrible slaughter by the elemental powers of the underworld. But once again, in our own days, these powers have awakened, and death and destruction have visited ancient and famous Messina, the noble city of the Straits and of Sunny Sicily.

Dreadful is the work that follows the clashing of sinking seas with the lakes of Hquid fire pent up in the earth. .Rack and ruin attend their meeting, and the dense solid shell of the earth is rent asunder by their might. It is to the battle of fire and water in the depths of the rocks that the volcano and the earthquake are due, and when these demons of the depths are at war man's puny strength is as powerless as that of the leaf before the cyclone. Then terror comes ; then the earth trembles to its heart and is rent in twain ; then the ashes of a terrible burning are cast forth to bury fertile plains and flourishing cities; then showers of burning rocks bombard the air and rivers of glowing lava scorch the earth, and human hopes and the results of man's labor are whelmed alike beneath the dread torrent of death and dismay.

8 PREFACE

Earthquake and famine, fire and sudden death — these are the destroyers that men fear when they come singly ; how much worse is it when they come together, as they did upon the stricken people of Sicily and Calabria in the recent terrible catastrophe, a hideous quartette whose mission was the death or torment of human beings, the destruction in a moment's time of the wealth they had gathered in years of patient effort. It is the purpose of this book to make a faithful record of the story of that awful hour of ruin when years seemed lived in a minute, and to preserve an accurate chronicle of its events, alike for the people whose hearts throb in sympathy to-day and for the benefit of their posterity.

Other frightful cataclysms the world has known. The earthquake which dropped the greater part of the city of Lisbon into the sea in 1755, and in a moment swallowed up twenty-five thousand of its people; the convulsion which rent Krakatoa Island asunder in 1883, and poured on the coast of Java a tidal wave in which thirty-six thousand human beings perished ; the whirlwind of fire which in 1902 overwhelmed St. Pierre in Martinique, with its thirty thousand inhabitants; the earthquake which in 1906 ruined in a moment of time the thronged city of San Francisco, are all significant examples. The earth we live upon is never safe beneath our feet. It may quake and lift into billows at a moment's notice ; it may pour forth volumes of fire from the molten lakes which lie in its depths : heedless as we are of all this we are never for a moment safe from some such convulsion of nature.

In view of all this, it has been deemed desirable to make this work a history of disasters of the character named : to gather within its pages a record of all the great convulsions of nature which history records; to recount the theories of the causes of earth-

PREFACE 9

quake and volcanic action ; to describe the geyser, the mud volcano, and all the minor outbreaks of the earth's internal forces. In this v^^ay its value will be very greatly added to, as within its pages readers will have a sufficient chronicle of all the famous historic disasters due to these causes.

When the weakness and the folly and the sin of men bring woe upon other men, there are plenty of texts for the preacher and no scarcity of earnest preachers. But here is a vast and awful catastrophe that befell from an act of Nature apparently not more extraordinary than the shrinkage of hot metal in the process of cooling. The consequences are terrifying in this case because they involve the habitations of half a million people; no doubt, the process goes on somewhere within the earth almost continuously, and it no more involves the theory of malignant Nature than that of an angry God.

If we contemplate it, possibly we may be helped to a profitable estimate of our own relative insignificance. We think, with some notion of our importance, of the thousand million men who live upon the earth; but they are a mere handful of animate atoms in comparison with the surface, to say nothing of the solid contents, of the globe itself.

We are fond of boasting in this latter day of man's marvelous success in subduing the forces of Nature; and, while we are in the midst of exultation over our victories, Nature tumbles the rocks about somewhere within the bowels of the earth, and we have to learn the old lesson that our triumphs have not penetrated farther than to the very outermost rim of the realm of Nature.

A few weak, almost helpless, creatures, we millions of men stand upon the deck of a great ship, which goes rolling through lo PREFACE

Space that is itself incomprehensible, and usually we are so busy with our paltry ambitions, our transgressions, our righteous labors, our prides and hopes and entanglements that we forget where we are and what is our destiny. A direct interposition from a Superior Power, even if it be hurtful to the body, might be required to persuade us to stop and consider and take anew our bearings, so that we may comprehend in some large degree our precise relations to things. The wisest men have been the most ready to recognize the beneficence of the discipline of affliction. If there were no sorrow, we should be likely to find the school of life unprofitable.

For one thing, the school wherein sorrow is a part of the discipline is that in which is developed human sympathy, one of the finest and most ennobling manifestations of the Love which is, in its essence, divine. In human life there is much that is ignoble, and the race has almost contemptible weakness and insignificance in comparison with the physical forces of the universe.

But man is superior to all these forces in his possession of the power of afifection; and in almost the lowest and basest of the race this power, if latent and half lost, may be found and evoked by the spectacle of the suffering of a fellow-creature.

The human family looks on with pity while the homeless and hungry and impoverished Sicilians endure pangs. Wherever the news went, by the swift processes of electricity, there men and women, some of them, perhaps, hardly knowing where Messina is, v/ere sorry and willing and eager to help. There are quarrels within the family sometimes, when nation wars with nation, and all love seems to have vanished; but the world is, in truth, akin. "God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth," and the blood *tciis'''' when suffering comes.

The Publishers.

SUBMARINE VOLCANOES AND THEIR WORK OF ISLAND- BUILDING 423

Chapter XXXIII. Mud Volcanoes, Geysers And Hot Springs 433

BOOK 1.

An Account of

The Great Earthquake of 1908

The Destruction of the Cities of Reggio

and Messina and Scores of Towns;

and the Laying Waste of Vast

Sections of Country in

Italy and Sicily fio

A CALAMITY COLOSSAL WITHOUT A PRECEDENT

T

THE SCENE OF NATURE'S MOST AWFUL DISASTER (December 28, 1908)

Chapter I

The Boot of Italy and Beautiful Sicily. The Garden Spot of the Mediterranean: Its Tradition, History, Geography, and Scenic Attraction.

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IDWAY in the greatest of inland seas, the famous Mediterranean, lies the splendid island of Sicily, the greatest in geographical and historical position in that great body of water. At one time, as science and tradition tell us, it formed a connecting link between Europe and Africa, a great natural roadway between the two continents, dividing the Mediterranean into two vast lakes or inland seas, one of the east and one of the west.

Geological research makes it evident that Sicily at one time extended south westward and joined the coast of Africa, and legend advises us that its northeast coast closed the present Strait of Messina, making the island an extension of the long peninsula of Italy. It was touched, in fact, by the toe of that singular boot-like projection which gives the south of Italy the appearance of taking a step forward into the sea, a step which would bring it in touch with the rock-ribbed coast of Sicily. The Strait, indeed, is only two miles wide in its narrowest section, and a giant foot might almost step from mainland to island in a single stride.

Triangular in shape, Sicily has an area of 9,860 square miles, identical with that of our state of Maryland. Its surface is elevated, most of it standing more than 500 feet above sea level, while in many i8 THE BOOT OF ITALY AND BEAUTIFUL SICILY

places it is mountainous. Its loftiest elevation is that of the great volcano of Mount Etna, which rises v^ith an exceedingly gentle slope from a base of 400 square miles in area to a height of 10,860 feet above sea level. In dark and never ending threat this huge smoking and flaming mass towers above the east coast of the island, at times pouring rivers of glowing lava down its rugged sides while the earth quakes in responsive sympathy, levelling like anthills the proudest erections of man upon its surface. Greatest and most phenomenal of all these disasters was that of the 28th of December, 1908, whose death-roll was one of the highest ever known in the earth's record of similar convulsions of nature. A full account of this frightful cataclysm is reserved for a later chapter of our work, it seeming a more satisfactory and artistic presentation of our subject to lay before the reader the scenic surroundings before dealing with the great event which gives them such striking importance.

THE ISLAND OF SICILY.

The island of Sicily of old was given the poetical name of Trinacria, arising from its triangular shape, and referring to its three promontories of Pelorum (now Faro) in the northeast, Pachynum (now Passaro) in the southeast and Lilybaeum (now Boeo) in the west. It occupies a part of the Mediterranean so shallow as to indicate that it was once above water, dividing the sea into two basins. The water between Sicily and Cape Bon in Tunis, is now, except for a very short interval, less than 100 fathoms in depth. The very narrow Straits of Messina, which separate it from Italy, are much deeper, nearly everywhere exceeding 150 fathoms.

There are indications in the character of the rocks around this strait that the island once formed part of the mainland, but was split off from it at an ancient date. Afterward it seems to have been joined again for a period, and Africa may also have been joined to Sicily in a recent geological period, as is shown by the fossil bones in Sicily of the African elephant, hippopotamus and hyena. But all this was probably before man came upon the earth and inhabited that island.

The north coast of Sicily is generally steep and has many good harbors, of which that of Palermo is the best. In the east also steep, rocky coasts prevail, except opposite the Plain of Catania, and in the northern half of this coast the giant mass of Mount Etna erects itself as a vast landmark, while its lava streams stand out for a distance of about twenty miles in a line of bold cliffs and promontories. In the west and south the coast is generally flat and less favorable to shipping.

The tides here, as in the rest of the Mediterranean, are so slight as to be scarcely observable, yet at several points in the west and south coasts the water occasionally rises suddenly to the height of three feet, and this is repeated at intervals of a minute sometimes for a number of hours. The cause of this curious oscillation of the water is not known.

The mountains of Sicily are chiefly in the north, their lower slopes everywhere being cultivated and forming a continuous series of olive groves and orange fields. The rest of the island is a plateau of varied elevation and to a great extent is devoted to the growth of wheat. The only large plain in the island is that of Catania, immediately south of the foothills of Etna. It is watered by the Simeto river.

THE SICILIAN CLIMATE.

Coming now to the question of climate, we find that Sicily has the warm and equable temperature of most of the Mediterranean region. The mean temperature of January is nearly as high as the October temperature of southern England. Snow is rarely seen on the coast, though on the higher peaks it lies till June and on Etna till July. The rainfall is so low in the summer months that most of the streams dry up in that season. In the winter it is often so great as to make torrents of the streams.

While the summer climate is usually soft and salubrious, it is not always so, the island being subject to a severe scourge in the Sirocco, a hot, dry, strong and parching wind which comes from the south, bringing with it leaden-colored and hazy skies, due to immense quantities of reddish dust brought from the Sahara desert. It lasts at times for three days, and while most frequent in April, no month is quite free from it. The same name is given to a moist and not very hot, but oppressive wind, which blows at times from the southeast. The Sirocco is the one thing that renders Sicily an unpleasant place of residence. Fortunately for the foreign residents it rarely occurs in the winter, the season in which the island is most attractive to these comfort-seeking birds of passage.

SICILIAN AGRICULTURE.

The flora of Sicily is remarkable for its wealth of species. It being more densely populated than any other large island of the Mediterranean and its people depending largely upon the products of their soil, it is extensively cultivated, and many plants may be seen in its fields which are not natives of the island. The olive, which is widely grown for its oil, must have been introduced ages ago, but the orange and lemon, the agave and the prickly pear, and various other plants characteristic of the island scenery, have been added during the Christian era.

There are three zones of vegetable Hf e on the island ; that of the orange family, which reaches to about 1,600 feet above sea-level; that of wheat and the vine, which ascends to about 3,300 feet; and that of forest land, which extends above this level. The mountains of Sicily are admirably adapted to foster a flourishing growth of cultivated trees in a climate of little rain during the warmer months. Composed mostly of limestone, they act like so many great sponges, the water sinking into and percolating through their innumerable pores and fissures. Thus stored up in their interior, it wells forth in springs at lower elevations, favoring the irrigation which is absolutely necessary for the orange and lemon during the dry season. Thus it is that all the higher lands in the north and northeast of the island present an endless succession of orchards of the orange, citron and lemon, together with groves of olives, almonds, pomegranates, figs, carobs, pistachios, mulberries and grapes.

As an export crop the orange and lemon are especially important, and the Messina orange has a world-wide reputation,. Since the steamship era the commerce in these fruits has greatly increased, and a striking feature in the commerce of the island is in the great supply of its fruits which is sent to the United States. Even more extensive than the cultivation of the orange and lemon is that of the olive, but this is less for exportation than for home consumption. This plant is grown to an elevation of about 2,700 feet, while that of the vine extends to some 800 feet higher. Among the plants adapted to a dry climate are the date palm, the plantain, the bamboo, and the dwarf palm, the latter growing in the greatest profusion in parts of Sicily. In the desolate region of the southwest it is nearly the only important vegetable product. Other plants which thrive on the driest soil are the deep-rooted sumach, the agave, and the prickly

■pear, the latter being a favorite article of diet. In the spring season beans form the chief article of food.

If we now leave the region of the oak and fruit trees, which form the chief element of the highland forests, and that of cultivated trees, and descend to the open country, we find the soil very largely devoted to the growth of wheat;. At present — as was the case in the days of the Greek colonies and the later ones of Roman supremacy — Sicily is a rich granary, capable of feeding a large population. Fully three-fourths of its cultivated surface are devoted to cereals, especially to wheat, and it is this plant which gives character to the Sicilian landscape through most of the year. In the plain of Catania cotton is grown along with wheat, and the sugar cane and tobacco are cultivated to some extent.

A singular fact in regard to the population of the island is that the far reaching slopes of Mount Etna are far more densely peopled than any other agricultural region of Sicily or of Italy. While the mean population of the rest of Sicily is 88, and that of Italy 90, to the square kilometre, that of Mount Etna numbers 450, forming an abiding place of 300,000 of the Sicilian people, dwelling in two cities and sixty-three villages. If we be asked the reason for this, the answer will be that it is due to the great fertility given the soil by the disintegrated lava. Here is an attraction to an agricultural community that sets aside the threat of the fire-vomiting mountain, and induces the peasantry to dare the peril of an occasional outpour of destroying lava for the benefits which the lava-coated mass yields them.

The island is in a very large degree an agricultural one, its one other important industry being the mining of sulphur, the most valuable mineral product of the island. There are about 300 mines

THE BOOT OF TTALY AND BEAUTIFUL SICILY 23

in operation, nearly all the sulphur being exported. Rock salt is another mineral of some value, about 3,000 tons being excavated yearly,.

THE CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE.

Let us now say something of the people of the island and their mode of life. In view of the fact that Sicily has been held at times by the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Saracens, the Normans, the Spaniards, and other peoples, its population is necessarily somewhat conglomerate. The Greek element prevails in the east and the Arab in the west, while the dialect of the Lombards survives in parts of the interior. Despite his poverty and his hard labor, the wretched character of his home and his unpalatable food — which consists of black bread, onions, beans, herbs, prickly pears, bitter cheese and weak wine, with rarely a taste of meat — the Sicilian is good humored and obliging, manly and independent. The laborers, whose wages range from is. to 2s. a day, live in dirty, one-roomed houses, which they share with their pigs and poultry, with dilapidated tile roofs through which the smoke goes out and the rain comes in; the bed, when possible, being sheltered with a strip of matting. The craftsmen have as dirty houses, though these have tiled floors and better furniture. As for the well-to-do inhabitants of the island, they live in the cities, there being no country gentlemen in Sicily, nor any houses for them. Even market-towns are unknown, though at times fairs are held.

We have given the better side of the Sicilian peasantry; now their worse side must be mentioned. The peasant is cunning and deceitful, is very cruel to animals, and seems natively vindictive and treacherous- Robberies and thefts are frequent, and for homicides

Sicily is one of the worst countries in Europe. Brigandage on a large scale, formerly common, has been put down, though bands of highwaymen still at times appear. The secret and lavv^-defying society of the Maffia continues to exist, though much reduced in numbers and importance, and the vendetta is apt to take the place of legal methods of punishment. This state of affairs is fostered by the ignorance of the people, three-foiirths of whom can neither read nor write. Devout they are, in their way, but their religion consists largely of superstition.

CALABRIA AND ITS PEOPLE.

Crossing now the Straits of Messina to the near by Italian province of Calabria, the foot of the Italian boot, a district which, near the Strait, severely felt the desolating effect of the earthquake, we find ourselves among a people not unlike the Sicilians. Proud, fiery and revengeful, they were long known as among the fiercest of banditti, and were so warlike and courageous that they resisted the armies of Napoleon until after all the rest of Italy had been subdued, not being finally quelled until 1810.

Calabria has an area of 6,600 square miles, it being somewhat larger than Sicily. Long and narrow, theAppenines form its backbone throughout, traversing its 160 miles of length; forests of oak, beech, and chestnut clothing their sides, while pine crowns their higher peaks. Calabria possesses only small streams, but these give fertility to the valleys between the hills, which afford rich pasture to the flocks and herds, and to the plains, the soil of which is very rich.

Here grow wheat, rice, cotton, saffron, liquorice, sugar-cane, and other useful plants, also such fruits as the orange, lemon, olive, fig, and mulberry, while the tunny and anchovy fisheries of the coast are of importance. The province is also well supplied with minerals, including iron, tin, silver, lead, alabaster, marble, and graphite.

The warmth of the climate and the extreme fertility of the soil are not conducive to progress among the people, and agriculture is in a very rude and barbarous condition, the people, as may be supposed from this, being ignorant and unenterprising.

SUNNY SICILY.

Passing from its material to its picturesque aspects, the Sicilian isle is one of manifold attractions. It may well be called Sunny Sicily, the sun shining for some three hundred days in the year, and throwing a brilliance over land and water alike that makes this isle a paradise for the artist and the lover of rich color and glowing landscape effects.

The life of the Sicilian is one of endless warmth, brilliant sunshine, blue skies, lovely flowers, gleaming waters. The sea everywhere envelopes the island and shines like a mirror through most of the year. All who visit that little isle at the toe of Italy find themselves fettered by its charms. Goethe wrote of it long ago: "Italy without Sicily leaves no image in the soul; here is the key of all." And many to-day yield to the glamour which took the great poet captive. Though so near Europe the vegetation of Sicily resembles that of warmer climes, semi-tropic plants and fruits abounding, while the soil yields two crops a year.

Everywhere in the northeast the giant bulk of Etna dominates the scene. From Reggio, on the opposite coast of Calabria, the snow-clad peak may be seen lifting its majestic head high above the fruit trees on its slope and the blue waters at its feet. A traveller thus gives the normal impression from this point: 'The first view of the volcano was enchanting. The day was glorious, and the bright sunlight, the glistening snow, the clear blue-green water were all like a dream." It is the same everywhere. The traveller quoted thus speaks of Palermo, over the charm of whose bay many writers have raved:

"The bay is a fine sweep, and Mount Pelligrino is a handsome finish, but the bay is hardly as beautiful as Naples and the rock is not so imposing as Gibraltar or Quebec. But the wonderful colorcharm prevalent in Sicily is manifest in Palermo; a certain quality of atmosphere gives clearness and haze by turns, and each in turn gains something more beautiful in tone than its predecessor. It is verily an artist's paradise, a paint-box riddle. Then, of course, one of its chief charms is the street life. Here again the artistic eye revels — the side-alleys are a kaleidoscope of queer scenes."*

Everywhere and at all seasons scenic effects of this kind may be looked for. In January, when snow and ice reign at the North, here the flowers open, the perfume of blossoms is in the air, the island is full of color and sweet smells. We might go on, lapsing into ecstasies over the scenic beauty of this lovely Mediterranean isle, but one more quotation from a sight-seer must suffice :

"There before us stood Sciacca straggling up the hill-side, grey and white in the sunshine, with pretty-colored tiled domes. Below was that turquoise-blue opalescent sea so often observed around Sicily, and behind, on a steep, hilly summit, stood the monastery of Monte San Cologero, rising 1,300 feet from the sea below. It really was a wonderful panorama. The day was lovely, lights sparkled on the white houses, while the dark cypress and grey olives,

* " Sunny Sicily," by Mrs. Alice Tweedie.

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"^ C "5 OJ^ CO !^ Cti 5 the white ahiiond blossom and bhie-grey ohve, made a perfect landscape, with goat-herds wandering along the roadside to add picturesquesness to the scene."

ANIMAL LIFE IN SICILY.

rSpeaking of the goat-herds, we are led to say something about the animal life of Sicily, and especially about the goat, that ubiquitous tenant of hill and plain. The goat is to be seen everywhere. No country can surpass Sicily, few equal it, in numbers of these animals. We may see them by the thousands. Wherever we go they intrude their forms as part of the landscape. They forage for themselves, it costing next to nothing to keep them. Anything of food character — bits of lemon or orange peal, strips of sea-weed, straggling blades of grass — serve their turn. They are very fond of the prickly pear, — when it is cut up for them, — it is too hard and spiny for them to attack it when growing.

Whole herds of goats are owned by some, often a single one by others. This is sent off in charge of a child every morning to browse by the roadside and brought home at evening to be milked, and often to sleep with the family. Butter, milk and cheese from this animal are to be had anywhere, and even in the large cities the goats are driven through the streets and their milk sold to any one who comes with a vessel to receive it.

Cows are also driven through the streets for the same purpose, their owner calling out that milk is for sale — though this is considered inferior to that of the goat. The cow heralds her approach by a bell around her neck. These animals wear wooden collars, six to eight inches wide, on which are painted quaint religious pictures. Sheep are also raised in numbers, and may be seen daily following the shepherds along the roads.