PORTUGAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 71, 7 November 1911, Page 8

PORTUGAL.

LISBON’S BLACK DAT

The great earthquake that devastated Lisbon on November Ist, Vivo, has been recalled to memory recently by the effoi ts of a scientist to discover a marble quay that was engulfed by the saa on that occasion. It was about iiine. o’clock in tho morning when the inhabitants of Lisbon hoard

a sound like Ii eavy thunder. A few seconds inter the city was tossed and shaken into a mass of rums and at least 20,000 people ware killed or terribly injured. Most of the churches were Idled at the time ana they were

converted into huge catacombs, the walls falling upon the congregations. Might hundred persons were killed in tiie gaol and 1200 doctors, patients and attendants lost their lives hi the general hospital. The sea retired from the harbour after fbe first shock and then polled in again as a wave fifty or sixty feet high. Many of the inhabitants had rushed on to the new quay, a mighty structure of cement and marble, hut their .selection of a refuge was disastrous in its consequences. Hundreds were carried to destruction by the returning wave and then a second convulsion of the ground caused a chasm to open under the quay. The whole mass disappeared, taking with it many small ships and boats, and apparently it was swallowed completely. Soundings taken some months later failed to discover any portion of the quay, and the recent investigation has shown that the harbour bottom is level and unbroken. The seaport of Satnbal, twenty miles south of Lisbon, was swept out of existence by the earthquake and an enormous amount of damage was done in Morocco, where a town of 8000 inhabitants sank into a chasm. Mire followed the great convulsion in Lisbon and the ruins blazed and smouldered for more than a week. November Ist is an anniversary still remembered in the Portuguese city.