A SCENE OF DESOLATION.

Wanganui Chronicle, Issue 19910, 8 October 1913, Page 5

A SCENE OF DESOLATION.

MESSINA

■4!AVAGES OF THE GREAT EARTH-

QUAKE STILL UNREPAIRED

(Times—Sydney Sun Special Cables.) Received 9-35 p.m.. October 7

LONITON, October 7

The '''Daily Chronicle's" Messina correspondent gives a vivid description of desolation. The Government a year ago voted a hundred thousand pounds to repair the ravages of the great earthquake, but the contractors have not ?Larted. The wharves are still sunken, the quay-sides shattered, and the parade encumbered with rubbish due to a ]50i?t. tidal wave. Nevertheless., tin* natural advantages are such that the trado of the port is already greatef than before the disaster. The Cathedral, ■vhereof the gem-laden altar alone cost £160,000, is in ruins. Twenty-two pilJars of the Temple of Neptune and Charybdis lie (smashed on the pavferaent. Nightwatchmen armed with revolvers guard the ruins, but many mosaics and statues have been plundered. Twenty-seven millions sterling of treasure has already been recovered from the ruins., including eighty thousand pounds cash from the premises of one small firm. Few Sicilians invest in the banks, preferring to conceal their hoards in sackfuls of coins, or in Oriental bonds. Exquisite jewels and pearls have been found. Thirty thousand bodies were not recovered. Many have been disinterred shockingly carbonised. In other cases there are unmistakable signs that the victims survived on the chance of food for days and weeks. Thirteen hundred bodies were buried in a tomb., a,hundred by thirty feet.