As we have pointed out elsewhere, death came to the
people of Messina on the Sicilian side of the Straits and of Reggio on the Calabrian, where the destruction was no less awful, and of the towns and villages near by both cities, with all the terrors which it is possible for the liveliest imagination to conceive. The swaying and rocking earth tumbled houses, Churches, theatres, palaces, prisons literally upon the heads of the inhabitants. The ground opened beneath them and
swallowed them or plunged them into pits of scalding water. At the same time waves from the sea, thirty feet high, rushed on the shore, levelling all before them, and in their back- wash carrying thousands of corpses out to sea. Then followed the fires, which broke out within a very few minutes of the earthquake. Those were happier who died at once, but many thousands remained pinned down alive in the ruins to die unrescued of their injuries, or if rescued to perish from the shock. Cold, starvation, and thirst came next to add to the death-roll. We read of women and children actually frozen to death, for even in Southern Italy the winter nights are cold.
Previous page
