the roots of the Appenines, in a plain, for twenty Italian miles in
length by eighteen in breadth. The earthquake lasted about a hundred
seconds. It was felt as far as Otranto, Palermo, Lipari, and the other
Æolian isles; a little also in Apuglia, and the _Terra di Cavoro_; in
Naples and the Abruzzi not at all. There stood in this plain a hundred
and nine cities and villages, the habitations of a hundred and sixty-six
thousand human beings; and in less than two minutes all these edifices
were destroyed, with nearly thirty-two thousand individuals of every
age, sex, and station,--the rich equally with the poor; for there
existed no power of escaping from so sudden a destruction. The soil of
the _Piana_ was granite at the base of the Apennines, but in the plain
the _debris_ of every sort of earth, brought down from the mountains by
the rains, constituted a mass of unequal solidity, resistance, weight,
and form. On this account, whatever might have been the cause of the
earthquake, whether volcanic or electrical, the movement assumed every
possible direction--vertical, horizontal, oscillatory, vorticose, and
pulsatory; producing every variety of destruction. In one place, a city
or house was thrown down, in another it was immersed. Here, trees were
buried to their topmost branches, beside others stripped and overturned.
Some mountains opened in the middle, and dispersed their mass to the
right and left, their summits disappearing, or being lost in the
newly-formed valleys; others slipped from their foundations along with
all their edifices, which sometimes were overthrown, but more rarely
remained uninjured, and the inhabitants not even disturbed in their
sleep. The earth opened in many places, forming frightful abysses;
while, at a small distance, it rose into hills. The waters, too, changed
their course; rivers uniting to form lakes, or spreading into marshes;
disappearing, to rise again in new streams, through other banks, or
running at large, to lay bare and desolate the most fertile fields.
Nothing retained its ancient form, cities, roads, and boundaries