The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-01-29
SIXTEEN MONTHS OF EARTH
 QUAKE.


 QUAKE.
 ! The later reports of the earthquake in Jamaica show that the loss of life as well as the destruction of property was even more serious than the first stories indicated. It was violent shock, and it has significance of far more than local character. This old earth of ours has been quaking at frequent intervals ever since the Sth of September, 1905, and there is no good reason for supposing that the disaster in Kingston is the last of the series. A year ago last September, eighteen villages were destroyed in Ca labria, Italy, the principal shock being accompanied by a terrible eruption of the volcano on the island of Stromboli Thousands of people were killed in this catastrophe and fifty thousand were rendered homeless. On the thir- ty-first of January, 1906, there was more loss of life in Ecuador, four is- lands off the coast disappeared and a tidal wave devastated the city of Es- meridas. Columbia also suffered in this upheaval
 Formosa took it's turn on the seven teenth of March, when over two thou and people were killed in the village of Kagi. Other towns in the island suffered and the property loss rose to forty-fve millions. Again In April another destructive earthquake ocsur- red in the same locality, and five days later, on April eighteenth, the San Franciso disaster began. Hundreds of earthquake shocks in California, ex- tending over a period of several weeks, ensued and on the sixteenth and sev- enteenth of August the enormous ca astrophe at Valparaiso and Santiago, Chili followed. As a presursor of the shock at Kingston, we heard only last week of the quakings of the earth in Pennsylvania and Michigan, on this side of the Atlantic and in Sweden and Russia on the other. Aetna has been in eruption since the beginning of the year, and now this destructive shift ing of subterranean pressures and con- sequent conflagration is reported from England's charming west Indian Is land What recort for sixteen months!
 Jamaica has been regarded as being outside the earthquake belt, but his tory shows that Kingston and it's inn mediate vicinity have been shaken be- fore. There is some volcanic rock in the island, although no orator is known to exist. The natural result of the disaster will be to alarm the people of the other West Indian islands, es- pecially those of Martinique and St. Vincent who only live years ago, were visited by volcanic fire. The experts say that there is no direct connection between earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, but the two sets of pheno- nena have habit of manifesting themselves at or about the same time. The Stromboli volcano was in eruption during the Calabrian earthquakes, Ve- suvius poured forth it's hot rn just be- fore the second shock in Formosa and { the catastrophe at San Francisco and Aetna belched out just before the re- | cent shocks in our own Middle States and this latest earthquake in the West Indies. If there is no common cause for such exhibitions of natures power, how does it happen that they adhere so closely to the rule of concomitant | variation?
 Unfortunately Kingston seems to have been destroyed almost entirely by the fire following the earthquake, It is a wooden town, and with wind such as frequently visits the island a seemingly inconsequendal fire might soon be famed into an engulfing blaze. Worst of all, the disorderly elements in the town have apparently got the up- l per hand, and a fresh terror is thus l added to the loss of life and property l There seems no new lesson to be drawn from the disaster. Tn the pre- sence of all earth-convulsion like this l there is nothing to do except to wait until the shaking subsidies Nature has certain forms of self-manifesta- ton. in which man is forced to realize | his puniness, and among them none is more awful than the violent quaking of the solid earth, falsely so called-