Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1886-09-11
EARTHQUAKES.
An Article Written just Before the Re-
cent Disturbances.


The following appeared as an editorial in
tie New Orleans States Immediately prior
to the recent earthquakes at Charleston
and throughout the East
The earliest records of history tell US of
the frequent occurrence Of earthquakes and
volcanic upheavals in the three prominent
peninsuas of southern Europe. Both the
Father of History and other Greek writers
are continually giving the details of seismic
throes that have Frustrated villages in
Greece, and sent the inhabitants forth in
white-lipped terror to seek the shelter oil
the open plains. Roman authors are no
less instant and copious in their recitais of
the disasters that have whelmed whole
cities and territories of the Italian penin-
sula, leaving where once they tlourished
but the beds of lakes or unsightiy mounds
of ashes and scori;e.
Precisely the same also was the expert
ence of Spain and Portugal, that third
peninsula that looks as if it were yearning
to say adios" to the sterner climate of
northern Europe and to bury itself amid
the blue skies and balmy gales of SUMMER
southland. All three peninSulas have suf-
fered fearfully from seismic calanlities, not
only in ancient but in modern times. Some
where about the year 1855, if we remember
Alright, the city of Lisbon, in the Iberian
peninsula, met with fate more fearful al
most than that experienced by any other
habitation of man, not excepting that trio
of renowned Roman towns, Pompeii, Her.
culaneum and Stable, that were burned
under the eructed ashes of grimy Vesuvius.
In that year, an earthquake, iiercer and
more ravenous than any recorded in his
tory visited the stately city on the Tagus
and in three hours time one quarter of the
city was level with the ground, and over
60,000 of its inhabitants had persisted,
killed amid topping walls or engulled i'll
assures and chasms that opened wide in
the earth and sucked them down in the
abysses.
\ few years later it was the turn of the
Italian peninsula. Seismic commissions
were continual for few weeks in the dis
trict of Calabria, and their casual attacks
eliminated in mighty earthquake that
carried over to the majority in two hours
a populace that numbered over 10000.
These two are the most destructive to hui
man life of all seismic disturbances re-
corded in history.
Now, again, as if the three peninsulas
had q tacit arrangement between them to
keep the thing going on i'll handsome ro-
tation, the Greek peninsula comes to the
front with an earthquake not so fatal to
life, but still terribly fatal.
In the Geographic dispatches of the
States yesterday afternoon our readers were
informed that the Morea which is the
southernmost region of the mainland of
Greece, was the scene yesterday of one of
those fearful visitations, entailing loss of
at leas; 800 lives. There were two towns
allied in this destruction, Philiatra and
Pyrgos, both on the west coast of the Mo-
rea. In Pyrgos not house is left stand
ing, while Philiatra is almost swept away,
swallowed up in commissions OF the earth
The shocks were experienced over the
whole of Greece with a greater or less de-
gree of violence, and the motion was felt
distinctly westward in the island of Zante
where many houses were shaken, and
more family in southern towns of Italy.
1t is within our power to congratulate
ourselves, as we hear of these terrible cata-
clysms in foreign parts, on the immunity
from such dreadful yisitations which we
enjoy in our safer southwestern homes.