EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11975, 26 May 1902, Page 6

EARTHQUAKES AND VOLCANOES.

The terrible scries of earthquake explosions that are now occurring in the West Indies must direct the attention of everyone to former events of the same nature that have occurred within historic times. THE FIRST ERUPTION OF VESUVIUS. The first recorded eruption of Vesuvius is in some respects, the most memorable. It took place in A.D. 79, on August 24, and destroyed the cities of Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiiß. Forewarning of it had been given in a.d. 63, when Pompeii and Herculaneum suffered severely from an earthquake. But they had begun to rebuild their shattered edifices when the more ternbie catastrophe occurred. ... ~ , Its incidents have been minutely described by the younger Pliny, whoso uncle, the author of" the " Historia Naturalis," was one of the victims. ■ He particularly notices the phenomenon of a huge cloud of smoke and vapour, which rose above the mountain, and which he compares to a pine-tree, shooting up to a great height like a trunk, and extending itself at the top into a canopy of branches. He also alludes to the darkness which prevailed; the incessant showers of cinders, pumice stones, and black pieces of burning rock; to the noisome exhalations and suffocating gases which filled the air; the electric flashes that occasionally lit uo the scene; the agitation of ocean, and violent oscillations of the earth; in a word, we may gather from his narrative the principal feautres of a volcanic eruption, K om : peii was overwhelmed by showers of calcined pumice stone, or lapilli, and by vast streams of water and wet sand, which thickened into a species of volcanic paste. Herculaneum owed its destruction to the torrents of volcanic mud, which rolled over the city with irresistible force, and filling all its edifices nearly to the roof, hardened as it dried into a coarse tufa. To exaggerate the horrors of such a catastrophe is, perhaps, impossible. The rumbling "of the earth beneath—the dense obscurity and murky shadow of the heaven abovethe long heavy roll of the convulsed sea—the strident noise of the vapours and gases escaping from the mountain crater shifting electric lights, crimson, emerald green, lurid yellow, azure, blood red, which at intervals relieved the blackness, only to make it ghastlier than before the hot hissing showers which descended like a rain of —the clash and clang of meeting rocks and riven stonesthe burning houses and flaming vineyards—the hurrying fugitives, with wan faces and straining eyeballs, calling on those they loved to follow —the ashes, and cinders, and boiling mud, driving through the darkened streets, and pouring into the public —above all, that fine, impalpable, but choking dust which entered everywhere, penetrating even to the lowest cellar, and against which human skill could devise no effectual protection; all these things must have combined into a whole of such unusual and such awful terror that the imagination cannot adequately realise it.

Since then frequent eruptions have occurred. THE EARTHQUAKE AT LISBON. We give the following particulars of the great earthquake a^kLisbon in 1755: — On November 1, 1755, at fifteen minutes to ten a.m., the sky being clear and cloudless, the thermometer standing at 64.25 degrees F., a report like that of thunder suddenly echoed under the city of Lisbon. This awful roar was followed by throe shocks. The first was hardly perceptible ; but about thirty seconds afterwards, the ground experienced an oscillation which lasted from thirty. to forty seconds, and proved to be of such violence that most of the houses of tho city began to totter. The dust raised by their downfall was so dense as completely to obscure the sun. In about a couple of minutes this dust settled to some slight extent, and enough light was afforded to enable the startled inhabitants to look about them and reconnoitre the amount of injury effected, when a third shock convulsed everything anew. The houses which had previously escaped toppled headlong with a frightful roar; the sky grew dark; it was the image of chaos. The oscillations of the earth, which still continued to shake—the dim twilight of the day— groans of the dying and the wounded—the frantic shrieks of alarm from those who had been saved, but every moment apprehended a terrible fate—and the howls of the terrified animals — the horror and confusion of the catastrophe. But in about ton or twelve minutes the movements of.the soil ceased.

It was then found that Lisbon had ceased to exist. The calamity had occurred on All Saints' Day. one of the great "festivals of the Roman Church. Eager crowds had accordingly thronged to the sacred edifices, where lamps were blazing, and incense was ascending in fragrant clouds of odour, and robed priests and acolytes moving to and fro in solemn procession, while tho sounds of noble music peeled over the heads of kneeling worshippers. And in the midst of their devotions, on priest and votary alike, had fallen the sudden doom; swifter and more terrible even than the appalling fate which seventeen centuries before had smitten the bright cities in the shadow of Vesuvius. The incense no longer spread in perfumed waves upon the air; the chant was lost in an awful hush and silence, followed almost immediately by a storm of cries and groans which all the organs of Lisbon had vainly attempted to drown. Out from aisle and nave streamed the startled crowds: they rushed into the streets, but the houses were bending like aspens before the wind, and in- a moment fell to the ground, a hideous mass of ruin. Everywhere might be seen the dead and dying, the wounded and mutilated; and so frightful was the prospect, so heartrending were the shrieks, that the minds of the bravest were paralysed into a dull, hopeless, stolid inaction, and many minutes elapsed before the few who had escaped could bethink themselves of the thousands that had perished. Forty thousand persons at least were buried, dead or dying, under the chaos which, a, few minutes before, men had known as Lisbon. At the first shock the sea" had retired, as if in alarm; at the second it suddenly returned, with a leap like that of a tiger on his prey, and rising fully 50ft above its ordinary level, furiously flung itself upon the shattered city. Then again, it receded with an equally rapid movement; otherwise the whole town must have been submerged The mountains of Arrabicb. Estrella, Julio Marven, and Cintra, which are included among the most elevated points of Portugal were violently shaken; a few were rent open l' to their very summit, which was cleft and broken in a most singular fashion; enormous i masses of rock, loosened from their crum- ! bling sides, rolled down into the valleys; ! and it was said that flame and smoke issued from their fissures, irradiated by electrio flashes.

But words can convey no accurate idea of the spectacle presented by the ruined city, of the corpses piled under its debris, of the dying half-buried under the rent houses and fallen churches. So great was the panic that the most resolute durst not pause a moment even to remove the heavy stones which were choking the life out of the being they loved most dearly, and whom a helpful hand might still have saved; the cowardly sentiment of self-preservation alone prevailed at this terrible hour. The only means of safety seemed to be an immediate night to the open country, whither, with tottering but rapid steps, hastened crowds of weeping and wailing fugitives. Those who inhabited the upper storeys of the houses were more fortunate than those who had rushed out of doors into the crumbling streets. Persons on foot suffered more severely than those in carriages. But nowhere was the number of the dead, for reasons already stated, so appalling as among the rums of the churches. At the first shock moreover, hundreds had hastened, out of a not unnatural instinct of devotion, to take refuge in the sacred buildings, where they all perished, crushed by the fall of spire, and tower, and vaulted roof. About two hours after the catastrophe, fire broke out at three points of the city • burning cinders and ashes having been brought into contact with all kinds of com bustible material., To increase the misfortune, a strong breeze, which succeeded the morning's calm so stirred un the flames and so earned them in every direction that Thu eS lon r n beoa ™ SS. that Inu,, earth and water, and fire seemed to have combined iheir forces to Sm mate he destruction of this most unforrn ni nVt eirT *" t^^'the or £ f SS -every lane or street still left standing—there might you have seen men and women emerging spec" error e 'some' disfi^ed > - half P«fi3d 53, Soom°or ? ar , r .y in S with them a valued able to dragon? £' ° th S ? arC L ely nearly all „- t u g their w °"nded limbs; nearly ail with voices half-strangled y de- & a thev e r% Cing »°» th dear y one A father I 'If' but should see no more. If,,', , a m °*er, sought distractedly for heir H Ten; - * wife Vain,y appealed for oh d to her missing husband; the weeping phiTd invoked in vain its parent's succour* their bfd! and the infirm ™° Seated in mad with' V co, . ,sum6d by the flames ; some, rfess of A despair, and lost to all consciousnnor, ,V „ K< ? ne around them lay stretched fVK i ■ aX *-' l, motionless and almost dead vj.neis '. kneeling, implored the mercy of an angered and avenging God. Un tho occurrence of the first convulsion many persons,- in the expectation of finding a secure asylum on tho waters, had made

towards the harbour to _. . .^ = * ! 98 - £'■ • selves on board its boats V^ tptf * t * tiriaFM the great ocean W spoke, hurled ships and ft* *• C ' shore and drove them one ,i- ' V*** *h» "= in wild confusion. The ebb aSt ■■"*«»* ~~ with great violence throughout &" lfc »** apparently rushing "with " ut we Di Slit intervals of five minutes , .■, ** .*<*<* ii The harbour was embanked *ifU did quay of white .-nuffif %** fe structed at a very great exi! 1 ?" <*>&- multitude of individuals took *' i ' ** * to be safe from the failin e „ rto ' a & e > hop; Dwhole quay sank suddenly•i?*',. B »* fiii ' under the waters, and go ' " 1 not a angle one of the victim, ' letclr ' *•! 1 ned down with it ever rose to m *"* «-'S A great number of beats, and SUrf »o. " craft which were moored to L Some *mall appeared in the same .abyss an,? s&• * ' ment of their wreck wag ever.' * b*Smust suppose, to explain this eii** iW * ' event, that a certain extent ~f ruinM into a chasm which opened <m,U £■* almost immediately closed TV 7 * 7, * a d been attested by the direct evil? Ct h « eye-witness who escaped the disaster ° J **