AN EARTHQUAKE IN THE ABRUZZI.

Colonist, Issue 2, 27 October 1857, Page 4

AN EARTHQUAKE IN THE ABRUZZI.

BY L. MARIOTTI. 'An earthquake ?' said I. ' No! I should like to know what it is like.' It was in February, 1834; I was a guest of Don Marzio Pignatelli, in Aquila, of Abruzzo. The Englishman never thinks of Italy without dreaming daggers and poison. Never of the Appenines, without conjuring up starving hostelries and banditti scenes. There is an Italy in the Soutli which God has created; there is another somewhere in the clouds that Monk Lewis and Mrs. Radcliffe, with a crowd of minor horror-mongers, have got up for the benefit of gullible readers. Don Marzio's house and family, their manners and habits, might befit an English gentleman farmer of the old school. The same lavish hospitality, the same substantial hearty cheer, the same roaring horse-laugh. Donna Betta, his wife, was a very pattern of apple-tart makers. Don Marzio himself was quite a conjurer in the manifold science of coffee-boiling. We were just on the point of testing his unrivalled abilities on that score. Dinner had been removed; and we gathered round the fire—husband, wife, and guest. It was, as I have Said, the 13 th of February. The open air was, at that time, deemed unwholesome for me. Don Marzio, himself an old Carbonaro, harboured me in his house; with a true Abruzzes's love of contraband, cherishing his guest in proportion to the danger and mystery which encompassed him. The fragrance of the purest Mocha, inspiriting, inebriating, spread all over the room. Coffee, it was part of his tenets, should never be confined by a lid, never polluted of milk. He would prose about roasting and toasting, pounding and grinding, till he was hoarse with excitement. On that day, however, some secret thought preyed on his mind, and the chemical preparation proceeded in silence. He sat on the right chimney corner, his wife on the left, and I remained standing between. * So, then, Bird-in-the-bush,' (Uccella in frasca —it was by that name he loved to designate me) 'so you sleep proof from thunder and earthquake, do you ? I congratulate you; the shock was enough to rouse the dead from their graves, I tell you.' ' I always thought it was a dream of yours, Don Marzio;' interposed my host's better-half, languidly. *Itis a dreadful bore, I declare, to be disturbed in your first slumber, and scared out of your wits, from no better reason thaii that.' , ' A dream of mine ?' retorted the ama- * San Francesco Solano, whoever he may be, is the patron-saint against the earthquake all over Italy. In most Franciscan convents there is an image of the saint, holding the globe of the earth in his outspread palm. The globe is so nicely balanced in his hand that the least undulation of the ground ■will determine its fall. The friars are thereby empowered to announce the slightest symptoms of commotion of the ground.

teur coflee-maker. -And San Francis Solann, who has dropped his ball* in the night, and the procession of the Capuchins, and the whole town in alarm—is that all a dream, too V ■ ' Well, well,' I said, anxious to conciliate. • a pure conscience and easy slumbers, you know, I heard nothing of this—never heard anything like an earthquake in my life. I wonder what it can be like ?' Theee were magic words. The sound had not quite died away, when the feet I stood on seemed suddenly seized with the cramp. Cup and coffee-pot dropped as dead from Don Marzio's hand as the ball from St. Francis's palm. There was a rush as if of many waters ; and for about ten seconds my head was overwhelmed by awful dizziness, which numbed and paralysed all sensation. Don Marzio, in form an athlete, in heart a lion, but a man of sudden, sanguine temperament, flew up like a bird, and darted out of the room, with the ease of a man never burdened with a wife or friend. Donna Betta, a portly matron, also rose and followed instinctively ! but I—-I never could account for the odd freak—laid hold of her arm, bidding her stay. The roar of eight hundred houses reeling and quaking, the yells of ten thousand voices in a fit of despair had wholly subsided, ere I allowed her calmly and majestically to waddle up to her good man in the garden. : Thank God, we found ourselves all in the open air, under the broad canopy of heaven. We- began to count heads. Yes, there we. all stood, children,,nursery maids, stable-boys, all as obedient to the awful summons as the best disciplined troops at the roll of the drum. It was February, as I have twice observed, and we were in the heart of the Appenines. The day was rather fine, but pinching cold ; and when-the fever of the first terror abated, the lady and the little | ones began to shiver in every limb. No 1 one dared to break silence, but Don Marzio's eye wandered significant!}?- from one to another's countenance in that awestricken group. There was no mistaking his appeal. Yet, one after the other, his menials returned his gaze with well-acted perplexity. Ne one so dull as those who will not understand. Reader, I was then two-and-twenty. I had had my trials, and could boast of hairbreadth escapes. I smiled dimly, nodded to the old gentleman, clapped my hands' cheerily, and the next moment was once more under the roof. I made a huge armful of cloaks and blankets; snapped up every rag with all the haste of a marauding party, and moved towards the door, tottering under the encumbrance. But now the dreaded crisis was at hand. Earthquakes, it is well known, proceed by action and reaction. The second shock, I was aware, must be imminent. I had just touched the threshold, and stood under the porch, when that spasmodic sensation once more stiffened eveiy muscle in my limbs. Presently I felt myself lifted from the ground and hurled against the pillar on my right; the rebound again drove me to the post on the opposite side; and after thus being repeatedly tossed and buffetted from right to left, like a shuttlecock, I was sent down to the ground outside, having tumbled headlong the whole range of the four marble steps of the entrance. The harm, however, was not so great as the' fear, and thanks to my gallant devotion, the whole party were wrapped and blanketted, till they looked like a party of wild Indians; and as we trod now on comparatively firm ground, we had leisure to look about us. The garden was open and spacious, being bound on three sides by the halfcrumbling wall of the town. On the fourth side lay the house, now miserably shaky and ricketty. Close by the house was the chapel of the Ursuline Convent, and above that its slender spire rose, chaste and stainless, " pointing the way to heaven." Any rational being might have deemed himself sufficiently removed from brick and mortar, and, in so far, out of harm's way. Not so Don Marzio!' He contended that the shadow of that spire not unfrequently stretched all the way afcross his garden, which, towards sunset it possibly did; but, by a strange perversion of argument, he added, that so far as the shadow extended there might also the body that casf ~it reach in its fall; for fall it obviously must; and as the danger was pressing, he deemed it unwise to discuss which of the four cardinal points the tower might feel a leaning towards, whenever it 'looked around and chose its ground.' Don Marzio was gifted with animal courage proportionate to the might of his stalwart frame. But mere thews and sinews were of little avail in the case. The garden was no breathing ground for him; and he was resolved upon prompt emigration. The people of Aquila, as indeed of most towns in Southern Italy, have the habit of, therefore a peculiar talent for, earthquakes. Two hundred yards outside the gate there is half a square mile of table land on the summit of a hill; a market-place in the days of ease, a harbour of refuge in the urgency of peril. From the first dropping of the earth-ball from the hand of their guardian the most far-sighted among the inhabitants had been pitching their tents. The whole population was now swarming there; pulling, pushing, hauling and hammering away for very life; with women fainting, children screeching, Capuchins preaching. It was like a little rehearsal of doomsday. 'Don Marzio, a prudent housekeeper, had the latch-key of a private door at the back of the garden. He threw it open, not without a glance of misgiving at the mossgrown wall over head. Then he hemmed twice, and gave me a feverish shake of the hand. ' I am heartily sorry for you, my b(fy,' he cried. ' A fiwruscito, as I may say, a Birdr-in-the-bush. You dare not show

your nose outside the door. Safe enough here, I dare say,' with a stolen glance at the spire, ' but you see, imperative duty—> father of children—and so, God bless you.' . With this he left me there, under the • deadly shade' of the steeple, ordered out his little household band, and away they filed, one by one, the head of the house himself manfully closing the rear. I was alone—alone with the earthquake. Solitude and despair, witness Robinson Crusoe,.will inspire a muu with endless resources. There was a wood-cellar in one of the outhouses, access to which was easy and safe. One of my host's domestics had slipped flint and steel into my hands. In less than half-an-hour's time, a cheerful fire-1 crackling before me. I drew forth an old arm chair from the wood-cellar, together with my provision of fuel. I shrouded myself in the ample folds of one of Don Marzio's riding cloaks ; I Sat with folded arms, my eyes riveted on the rising blaze, summoning all my spirits round my heart, and bidding it to bear up. The sun had long set, and the gleam of a sickly twilight rapidly faded. A keen, damp north-east wind swept over the earth; thin, black, ragged clouds flitted before it like uneasy ghosts. .A stray star twinkled here and there in the firmament, and the sickle-shaped moon hung on; the west. But the light of these pale lumiriariet was wan and fitful. They seemed to be aware of the hopelessness of their struggle, and to mourn in anticipation of the moment when they should faint in fight, and unrelieved darkness should lord it over the fields of the heavens. , * The town of Aquila, or * the Eagle,' as the natives name it, is perched, eagle-like, on the brow of an abrupt cliff, in the bosom of the loftiest Appenines. Monte Reale, Monte Velino, and the giant of the whole chain, the Gran Sasso d'ltalia, look down upon it from their exalted thrones. Within the shelter of that massive armour, the town might well seem invulnerable to time and man. But now, as I gazed despondingly round, the very hills, everlasting, seemed rocking from their foundation, and their crests nodding destruction. Which of those mighty peaks was to open the fire of hell's artillery upon us ? Was not Etna once as still and dark as yonder ' Great Rock,' and yet it now glares by night with its ominous beacon, and cities and kingdoms have been swept away at its base. , Two hours passed away in gloomy meditation. The whole town was a desert. The camp-meeting of the unhoused Aquilani was held somewhere in the distance: its confused murmur reached me not. Only my neighbours, the Ursuline nuns, were up and awake. With shrinking delicacy, dreading the look and touch of the profane, even more than the walls of their prison-house, they'had stood their ground with the heroism of true faith/and reared their temporary asylum under their vinecanopied bowers, within the shade of the cloisters. A high garden wall alone separated me from the holy virgins. They were watching and kneeling. Every note from their silver voices sank deep in my heart, and impressed me with something of that pious confidence, of that imploring fervour, with which they addressed their guardian angels and saints. Two hours had passed. The awfulness of prevailing tranquility, the genial warmth of my fire, and the sweet monotony of that low mournful chanting, were by degrees gliding into my troubled senses, and lulling them into a treacherous security. * Just so,' I reasoned,' shock and countershock. The terrible scourge has by this time exhausted its strength. It was only a farce after all. Much ado about nothing. The people of this town have become so familar with the earthquake, that they make a carnival of it. By this time, they are perhaps feasting and rioting under their booths. Ho! am I the only craven here ? And had I not my desire ? Am I not now ■ on speaking terms with an earthquake ?' Again my words conjured up the waking enemy. A low, hollow, rumbling noise, as if from many hundred miles distance, was heard coming rapidly onward along the whole line of the Appenines. It reached us, it seemed to stop underneath our feet, and suddenly changing its horizontal for a vertical direction, it burst upwards. The whole earth heaved with a sudden pang; it then gave a backward bound, even as a vessel shipping a sea. The motion, then became undulatory, and spread far and wide, as the report of a cannon, awakening every echo in the mountains. There was a rattle and clatter, as if of a thousand waggons shooting down stones in the town...- The Ursuline steeple waved in the air like a reed vexed with the blast.' The chair I stood on was all but capsized, and the fire at my feet was overthrown. The very vault of heaven swung to and fro, ebbing and heaving with the general convulsion. The doleful psalmody in the neighboring ground broke short abruptly. The chorus of many voices sent forth but one rending shriek. The clamour of many thousands of the town gave its wakeful response. Then the dead silence of consternation ensued. I picked up every stick and brand that had been scattered about, steadied myself in my chair, and hung down my head. ' These black hounds,' I mused 'hunt in couples. Now for the re-percussidh!' I.had not many minutes to wait. • Again the iron-hoofed steeds* and heavy wheels of the state chariot of the Prince of Darkness were heard, trampling and rattling in their course. Once more the subterranean avalanche gathered and burst. Once more the ground beneath throbbed and heaved as if with rending travail. Once more heaven and earth seemed to yearn to each other; and the embers of my watchfire were cast upwards and strewn aSundeiv It was an awful, long winter night. The same sable' clouds rioting in the sky, the same cruel wind moaning angrily through he withered' branches, through the chinks

and crevices of many a shattered edifice. Solitude, the dullness of night, and the vagueness, even more than the inevitableness, of the danger, wrought fearfully on my exhausted frame. Stupor and lethargy soon followed these brief moments of speechless excitement. Bewildered imagination peopled the air with vague, unutterable terrors. Legions of phantoms sported on those mishappen clouds,. The clash of a thousand swords was borne on the wind. Tongues of living flame danced and quivered in ever}' direction. The firmament seemed all burning with them. I saw myself alone, helpless, hopeless, the miserable butt of all the rage of warring elements. It was an uncomfortable night. Ten or twelve times was the dreadful visitation reproduced between sunse? and sunrise, and every shock found me utterly unnerved; and the sullen resignation with which I recomposed and trimmed my fire had something in it consummately abject, by the side of the doleful accents with which the poor half-hoarse nuns, my neighbors, called on their blessed virgin for protection. The breaking morn found me-utterly demoralised ; and when Don Marzio's servants had so far recovered from their panic as to intrude upon my solitude, and offer their services for the erection of my tent in the garden, I had hardly breath enough left to welcozne them. Under that tent I passed days and nights during all the re-, mainder of February. The shocks, though dimmishedin strength, almost nightly roused us from our rest. But the people of Aquila soon learned to despise them. By one, by two, by three, they sought the threshold of their dismantled homes. Last of all, Don Marzio folded his tent. His fears having, finally, so far given way, as to allow him to think of something beside himself, he exerted himself to free me from confinement. He furnished me with faithful guides, by whose aid I reached the sea coast. Here a Maltese vessel was waiting to waft me to a a land of freedom and security. From that time I was cured for ever of air curiosity about earthquakes. ■ ■