The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-11-20 00:00:00

TITPJ sTOTIMMGE 01141'Ett

THE EARTHQUAKE IN AUSTRIA.

Several shocks of earthquake were felt in"Agram on
Saturday night, but the chief danger is considered to
be over, and calmness is so far restored that attention
is being directed to the repairing and rebuilding of the
houses. Out of 1,600 houses of which the town con-
sisted not one is said to be now in a perfect condition.
One-fourth of the inhabitants have fled, and of
the remainder the majority are spending the nights
in the streets. All the churches except one are ruined,
and all the schools are closed. The grand room
in the Archbishop's palace, with portraits of all the
Emperors in Gobelins tapestry, is absolutely destroyed.
Most of the public offices must be transferred to some
other town during the rebuilding. The gasworks are
badly damaged, and the town is lit with petroleum.
The office of the National Bank and the military com-
mander's palace will have to be demolished. A body
of gapperc has arrived, The local autherics have cent
a circular to the neighbouring towns asking for brick-
layers, carpenters, and labourers to help in reconstruct-
ing the place.

The Daily News .1 Tuesday published the following
telegram from Vienna, dated Monday night :-
- - -

_
At Agram the earth moved yesterday, but almost
imperceptibly. The movement could only be ascer-
tained by instruments. Seismo-chronographs will N
introduced in zone Of the telegraph st4tiOsns, simda
to those in Germany. The inhabitants of Agram are
constructinc, small instruments to indicate the motion
of the earth'. People are becoming less nervous, but
the mindp pf many women have been quite unhinged,
and some constantly laugh ami we conyuhayplTY.
• :4
Yesterday thousands of the country people want to
Agram to witness the scenes of destruction there.
Trains fu:l of workpeople, chiefly Italians, also
arrived.
New building regulations have been issued. Pro-
bailly three-storied houses will be prohibited.
SOme noe geplogists have given their opinion on
the earthquake. Oiie thinks the mud crateis 410. Pg
the flssures are surface matter, the water emitted
being cold. In the fissure near Resnick there are
subterranean volcanic substances, Four miles from
Grossgorica there is a mud crater seventy centimetres
broad and thirty deep. Near Orosavelje hot water
was thrown up, and the hot springs peculiar to that
place were exceptionally active.
Yesterday there was an earthquake at Innsbruck—
twp s4ooFs, which lasted two seconds.

In a telegram from Vienna, on Tuesday night, the Corre-
spondent of the Daily News says:—

I have received the following telegram from
Agram, dateil one o'clo* to-day.
, .
" ' Last night was one of indeseribattle terror. Bight
;hocks were felt. The first took place at midnight.
Immediately all the people left their houses. Men,
women, and children filled the air with their screams
of terror. Fortunately the night was beautiful. All
4gram spent it in pie open air.
"'This nonig t few o'clock anether. shoclE was
felt. The earth shook seVerareiMeS, an eaoi tim
loud report as of thunder seemed to come from the
mountains. This was the worst night of all. Great
numbers of people left, and are still leaving, the city.
Ladies and children even of the wealthier classes had
to pass the night on the bare ground. It is feared
that sickness may break out.

"'The first earthquake shocks were very severe in
ptheeast ot uinetarftyluinyitlhlarths
tiriar
the tower. The body was found- in am upright posi-
tion. At Kraljvarh the church tower fell, and the
w4aV kalTiiilecl At
el-hrp afvaellii o nn; 7
bells are broken into fragments among the ruins. The
other villages report similar disasters.'
"Further advices from Agram state that 9,000 out of
the 24,000 inhabitants of the city have left. Many of
the wealthier classes have fled to their country houses
and vineyards. The poorer people still camp out in
the opbu a.

In noticing the recent earthquakes in Austria, The Times
had a leader, recounting some of the most disastrous modern
catastrophes resulting from these convulsions of nature, and
making some suggestions as to the probable cause of the
phenomena. We make the following extracts from the
article :

Th4re in pzoh3bly nq natigal phenontenop.
whose effect on the human mind is more terrifying
than that of an earthquake. Its rarity, it suddenness,
its infinite potentialities of destruction, its uncon-
trollable force, and the complete obscurity of its imme-
diate causes, all combine to give it that aspect of mys-
terious terror which at one time invested all the forces
of nature. In the presence of an earthquake the wisest
of men Rre helpless, the strongest powerless, 40 all
alike are struck with that awe of nature's power which
makes the religion of the savage and the superstition of
ignorant men. Slight shocks of earthquake, tremblings
almost imperceptible of the soil on which we live,
are probably common enough in most parts of the
world. In a great city they may often be undis-
tinvishable from the rumbling of a heaVY vraPn
along the streets, and, happily, there are many por-
tions of the earth's surface which, if experience is
any guide, may be regarded as practically safe from
the severer and more destructive forms of terrestrial
convulsion. But until we know the true cause of earth-
quakes and their nelation to other terrestrial pheno-
mena, it is impossible to set an absolute limit either
to the region of their occurrence or to the probgble
extent of their affectn. For thin season the slightest
shock of earthquake is as terrible for the moment
as those gigantic convulsions, happily rare, which
engulf cities or devastate half a continent. It may
pass away and be no more felt, or it may be the fore-
runner of sudden and vast destruction, from which
there is no escape. When houses are falling and their
walls are rocking and gaping the bravest man may be
excused if he shares the panic of his more timid•tieigh-
bours. All men have heard what earthquakes have
done, and none can tell, when the shock occurs, how
soon lie may share the fate of the thirteen millions of
human beings who are said to have perished in these
convulsions. . . .

"It is unnecessary to tell once more the well-known
story of the great earthquake,at Lisbon in 1155, which
destroyed more than 50,000 persons in less than ten
minutes, and ranks, according to any standard, as one
of the most appalling natural catastrophes ever re-
corded in the history of the world. The gigantic con-
vulsion of which Lisbon was virtually the centre ex-
tended over a surface of the earth estimated by
Humboldt as equal to four times the extent of Europe.
For extension in space, therefore, the earthquake of
Lisbon is probably without a rival, but for duration
iin time it s immeasurably surpassed by the less cele-
brated, but scarcely less remarkable, earthquake of
New Madrid, in the valley of the Mississippi, which
lasted almost incessantly during several months in
1811 and 1812, and culminated in the spring of the
latter year in the instant and total destruction of the
city of Caracas with 12,000 inhabitants. An earth-
quake not altogether dissimilar in its nature and ex-
tent to that of Agram, though a good deal more
destructive, will be specially remembered by many as
having occurred at Broussa, in Asia Minor, at thetime
of the Crimean War, in the early part of 1855. Con-
stantinople was then full of Englishmen, some of whom
will still vividly remember the consternation caused in
the city by the convulsion, which, though it did no
damage in Constantinople itself, almost reduced the
city of Broussa to ruins and caused the death of
several hundreds of its inhabitants. Of 125 mosques,
many of them dating from the time when Broussa was
the capital of the Turkish Empire, not one escaped un-
injured, and one of the most ancient and venerated
was totally destroyed. The old Saraeenic wall was
thrown down, and crushed in its overthrow the poor
and crowded habitations which clustered beneath its
shelter. A second shock completed the ruin begun by
the first, and several destructive fires broke out amid
the inflammable materials of the shattered houses. A
later and far wore destructive series of earthquakes
occurred in SMithern Italy and Sicilly in the winter
of 1857-8. The loss of life in these disasters was
immense, and many towns in Calabria were reduced
to ruins and rendered unhabitable. This European
convulsion was almost immediately followed by a
destructive earthquake in Mexico, in June, 1858 ;and
in March, 1859, the city of Quito was almost entirely
destroyed, with a loss of about 5,000 lives. By far the
most calamitous convulsion of recent times, however,
was that which occurred in South America in August,
1868. In Peru 2,000 and in Ecuador 20,000 persons
were estimated to have perished. The towns of Arica,
Arequipa, Islay, Iquique, Pisco, Juancavelica, Ibarra,
and several others were totally destroyed, and the loss
of
was
reckoned property was
to
h
estimatede
the aote i;n6t
centre
0000 i, Ott. Arica, wh
disturbance,ich
was first ruined by an ordinary shock, and then over-
iwnheeilgmhetdf
fathoms
oamts d le
tidal wave,
them which
stranded , hichfroaininded with x f
dshwipssi anchoredeet
of water alongside. A second wave broke over the
grounded vessels destrying most of them, and throw-
ing others several hundred feet above high-water
mark. At Arequipa the motion was so violent that
persons standing could not keep their feet. The
houses first rocked like ships in the trough of the sea,
and then came crumbling down. There were nine-
teen minor shocks before the disturbance subsided.
Central and South America, it is true may almost be
regarded as the natural home of earthquakes, but this
particular calamity of 1868 was one of the most de-
structive in a long record of destruction.

"It cannot be said that much has yet been ascer-
tained by science as to the exact cause and real nature
of earthquakes. That they are due to an explosive
convulsion which sets the solid material of the earth's
outer surface in undulatory vibration is pretty clear,
and many accurate observations have been taken of
the force and direction of the vibrations. But the
causes of the explOsive convulsion and the conditions
under which it occurs are still debated among men of
science. The connexion between earthquakes and vol-
canoes is probably a real one and more or less direct,
though it is still to a great extent indeterminate
There are regions of vast extent where volcanic action,
now extinct, may be traced on a large scale, though
it is evident that its nature was widely different from
that with which we are familiar in existing volcanoes.
Similarly, though earthquakes are more common and
more destructive in the neighbourhood of the sea, it is
so far impossible to say whether this connexion is
more than acaidental. The whole question constitutes
an intricate problem of terrestrial physics, and pro-
bably the data necessary for its complete solution are
not as yet available. In such a twilight of knowledge
it is no wonder that an earthquake, almost independ-
ently of its actual effects, still remains one of the most
terrifying of natural phenomena. In presence of it,
the wisest among us are still as the men of old, who
knew nothing of nature save as an awful and
inscrutable power."

"TOILERS OF THE SEE."—Hard-worked episcopal
curates.—Funny Folks
EMIGRATION FROM PORTUGAL.—In consequence of
the intention of considerable numbers of the poorer
inhabitants of the Azores to emigrate to Angola and
St. Thonid, and other African provinces (owing to the
want of labour), the Government official paper at
Lisbon has published a letter from the Minister of
Marine to the Civil Governors of the districts of Ponte
Delgada and the other ports, advising them to give
every facility to their so doing, adding that "this fact
demonstrates a tendency which, while highly advan-
tageous to the emigrants, might, att ae same time be
rendered profitable to the State, as by such means the
industry of husbandry in the Portuguese possessions
of Africa will be opened up, and the prosperity of the
same possessions increased."