Morning journal and courier., 1883-08-01
GREAT EARrHoUAKEs.

The catastrophe on the Island of Ischia is terrible one, but 1t fs not, aS some of our contemporaries are saying, one of the great est of the kind. There have been many such disasters which have done much more dam age to life and property.
 One of the earliest of the great earth quakes on record is that which occurred in the year 16 of the Christian era, in the reign of Tiberius, by which one hundred and twen- ty thousand people lost their lives. Ac- eording to Gibbon, two hundred and fifty thousand human beings were destroyed by an earthquake in 526. The city of Judea was destroyed in 31 B. C., when ten thou sand people lost their lives. An earthquake was felt by "nearly the whole world"-i. e., the eastern hemisphere-in 543. There was an awful one in 742 in Syria, Palestine and Asia, when the loss of life exceeded all cal oulation." Greece, Turkey, Syria, the Sici- lies and other areas within 'the earthquake zone' were visited again and again after the last named date, and thousands of persons perished. In Cilicia sixty thousand persons were killed in 1268. In 1274 there WAS 8 great shock in England and Glastonbury was destroyed; the island was again shaken by the greatest earthquake ever known there h 1918. In 1456 forty thousand persons per- ished in Naples In 1909 Constantinople suf- fered the loss of many thousand lives. At Lisbon, Portugal, in 1531, fif- teen hundred houses were thrown down and thirty thousand persons buried in the ruins. In 1926 Naples lost seventy thou sand persons In 1872, eighty thousand per- ished at Schamaki. In 1893, one hundred thousand residents of Sicily were destroyed. In 17O3 Jeddo, Japan, lost two hundred thou sand inhabitants. In Pekin, China, in 1731, one hundred thousand were swallowed up. In Grand Cairo, forty thousand persons fell victims in 1754. One of the most terrible occurrences was the 'tgreat earthquake" at Lisbon in 1755, when thirty thousand people were buried alive and thirty thousand more wero killed This earthquake was of almost unparalleled extent and force, being felt far south in Africa, more than twelve thousand Arabs perishing in Morocco, and as far north as Scotland.
 In 1797 nearly fifty thousand persons were killed by an earthquake in Pekin, and in 1872 not less than twelve thousand in Caracas, H44lCA C1Cy AHu SuA6ES4 dS severely De1OES and has suffered almost as severely since. In 1867 more than twenty thousand people were destroyed in moment in Calabria and other towns of the kingdom of Naples. Ma nilla, the capital of the Philippine islands, has several times been destroyed by earthquakes, with fearful loss of life, and by the last of these convulsions, in 1863, about ten thousand persons perished. It is estimated that sixty thousand people were destroyed by the great earthquake of August 13, 1868, in Peru, Ecuador and Chii. It is computed that in the course of 75 years, from 1783 to 1857, at least one hundred and eleven thousand persons were killed by earth quakes in the kingdom of Naples, an average of more than fifteen hundred year, in pop ulation of six millions.
 This record, incomplete though it is, is an appalling one. It gives startling idea of what is called 'fthe cruelty of nature.'' All these calamities came without warning and che young and old, the rich and the poor, the pious and impious, alike perished- Earth quakes have been cited as arguments against the existence of 8 good God. One thing seems to be certain and that is that in the plan of the universe human life is not as valuable as it appears to be to the majority of human beings.