THE EARTHQUAKE IN GREECE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 769, 26 November 1886, Page 8

THE EARTHQUAKE IN GREECE.

Electrician.

A Correspondent, writing from Zante on August 29, says :—lf the unfortunate inhabitants of the lonian Islands and the Morea had been led to hope that the unusually long immunity from earthquake shocks indicated that they had possibly taken another direction, the illusion has been most rudely dispelled by an earthquake of a character more general and extending over a wider area than Greece has ever been previously visited by. Many local phenomena as far back as last January, including the stoppage of the ooze from the pitch wells here, subterranean rumblings of a most pronounced character, unusually prolonged cal ms, and high water, prepared us. for something extraordinary. The whole of the past week had been peculiarly strange. Heavy elouds, which generally discharge their accumulated electricity at this season, remained stationary over certain points of the horizon. The temperature varied but one degree between noon and midnight, averaging 85JJ\, and by the observant sounds and noises of an unaccountable nature were noticed during the still small hours of the night. The news which had just reached here of the reported volcano some hundred miles south of this island tended, to increase our alarm, as former experience (about which I will inform you presently) led us firmly to believe in its existence. In order that your readers may form some idea of the idiosyncrasies of earthquakes, especially in this region, a brief history of those which have come under my personal notice during a thirteen years’ residence in this island may not seem out of place. It is tradition that serious shocks occur here every thirty or forty years, and the strong shock of St. Luke's Hay, 1840, is cited as the last one severely felt, and it is compared with the present one. The Greeks, however, are a singularly forgetful people, and do not now remember the night of October 26, 1873, when a subsidence of the sea close to the island caused far more damage locally than last Friday’s shocks ; but its area was very limited, and was not felt fifty miles away from its centre. After that shock the earth moved for thirty-five days, and from five to ten shocks of varying strength were daily registered by me, and never a month passed for some years after without one or more shocks to remind us to beware. Latterly, however, these warnings have ceased, and that true historian of real facts—the aged peasant—would shake his head and declare that the * vent holes were now stopped, and we must therefore look out for squalls.’ 'As a rule, hitherto, any local shocks, however distinct, were rarely felt in neighboring islands, and were classed in the same category as those I have described viz., strong shocks occurring periodically after an interval of a number of years when the frequent small shocks had ceased. On March, 28, 1885, at 8.25 p.m., whilst sitting at dinner, a violent undulation of a peculiar nature, and of a decided though distant force, occurred in Zante. In a few days it was fully proved that a most extensive subsidence of the sea’s bottom had taken place some eighty-five miles to the south of Zante. In certain places, where a depth of 800 fathoms previously existed, 1500 and 1900 were then found, and in others, hitherto measureable, no bottom could be found. In one place, where the bottom had been pre. vionsly quite “level, a difference of 350 fathoms existed between the bow and stern soundings of the Volta, the Eastern Telegraph Company’s repairing ship, engaged in the repairs of the cable broken by this suhsidence. It was generally considered advisable that a surveying man-of-war should take fresh soundings, as those marked on the Admiralty chart of 1864 must now be a very long way out. How far this subsidence extended it is difficult to form an idea, but that it was volcanic is undoubted from the following event which took place some few years before : —ln the month of August 1880 a huge black cloud about two miles in height, shaped like a great pine tree, extended over the south of the Island of Zante. The origin of this smoke was within a hundred and fifty miles of us, in a position where the chart shows 1200 fathoms of water. As the Binoke gradually extended calcined leaves of a putrid nature, hot ashes, and fine fibrous matter fell all over the place. One charred, but perfectly formed, leaf fell right upon my own arm, and was kept for some time as a curiosity. Some readers may remember these facts, for an account of them was telegraphed home by me at the time, and gave rise to all kinds of conjecture. There can be no longer any doubt that the upheaval there, the subsidence of the sea’s bottom, and the earthquake of last Friday all originated from the same source, and it is a most unpleasant thing to know we have such a dreadful neighbor ready to engulph us at any time. When the earth began to rock at twenty-seven minutes past eleven last Friday night the movement was perfectly equal, undulatory, and unaccompanied (fortunately for us) by any * kicks.’ It was in a pronounced direction from the south-east, and was preceded by a noise which we took for a steamer close at hand. It is variously estimated that the shock lasted from fifteen to forty seconds, but seconds are centuries in such supreme moments, and who can think

of counting them ? For my own part should say twenty seconds was about thoduration. The consternation was, of course,, general ; but my thoughts were far away where I knew the centre of the shock had its origin, and the next morning onr fears were fully confirmed. From Kastro Tornese, the prominent ruined castle in the Peloponnesian shore, opposite Zante, that gloriously fertile tract, the real Arcadia of the ancients stretches itself away to the southward, towards the Gulf of Calamata, the storm-beaten Cape Matapan, and the opposite island of Crete. The first place we come across is Katacolo, the port (and connected by a railway) of Pyrgos, one of the greatest and richest currant-growing districts in all Greece, the average produce amounting to nearly 40,000 tons. Further to the south are the other rising, flourishing, and at this season busy, towns of Gargaliano, Agbia, Kyriaki, and Filiatra, and the limit of this richly cultivated part of Greece ends at Calamata. All these places have been most seriously damaged, Filiatra the worst of all, not a single house remaining standing, and up to the time of writing 120 dead bodies have been extracted from the ruins. At Corone, close by, many houses fell, and thirty people were killed. The number of wounded is very considerable at both places, Calamata and its vicinity snffered proportionately less, being too far south of the earthquake’s centre. At the larger town of Pyrgos, a place of some 10,000 inhabitants, with many fine and apparently strong houses, it seems a simple miracle that there were few or no victims, as the houses have been so' generally and seriously damaged that the whole place is unrecognisable. The damage alone at this place is calculated at about two million francs. All the lonian Islands felt the shock most severely, especially Corfu, where the high stone houses render such visitations particularly dangerous—in fact, earthquakes were hitherto unknown there, and consequently it is an exception to find in that island the low built houses we have here and in Morea. Athens and Patras sensibly felt the,shock, as also several towns in the south of Italy, and the same appears to have been experienced at Malta. It is calculated with the greatest degree of certainty that in a circle of 300 miles radiating from its centre the whole of the earthquake’s effect can be traced. There is not the slightest shadow of doubt that this centre was in the sea and pretty close to the reported position of the supposed volcano, for the nearest place in a direct line between it and Malta is this unfortunate town of Filiatra. I am fully pursuaded that if the whole sea between Zante, the islands of Strofades down to Cape Matapan, were surveyed, it would be found that the sea bottom, for some ten to thirty miles, has regularly given way. None of the phenomena peculiar to regular magnetic disturbances accompanied this earthquake. It was precisely as you would see the waves roll overlapping each other, if a mountain were steadily lowered into the sea. Nothing else can be compared to the movement we experienced. Had, however, the swaying stopped halfway, to beginagainwiththeusual * kick,’ I am persuaded that the western coast of the Morea and the lonian Islands would only now exist as places ‘ that were. 9 The Greek Government immediately sent doctors and supplies to those places where help was most needed, and the misery will be less severe if the weather, hitherto menacing, keeps fine, to enable the currant crop to be collected, as the only income of twothirds of the Greek population is derived from that source.