Highland recorder. (Monterey, Highland County, Va.) 1877-1972, 1909-01-08
HAVOC BY QUAKE
Three italian Provinces and Towns
in Sicily Devastated.
100000 THOUGHT TO BE KILLED.
WITHOUT PRECEDENT IN HISTORY
OF WORLD - URGENT NEED,
MILLIONS BEING SENT.


For more than u week the news
papers have been filed with the
horrors and narrowing details of
the awful earthquake and tidal
wave which visited Southern Italy
on the 9th of December. We Gull
a few paragraphs from various re-
ports so that our readers may all be
enabled to form some idea of the
awful calamity
Messina, Jan. 1.-Messina has
been completely destroyed. The
quays and streets are reduced to
piles of ruins. The terror-stricken
population, many of them women
with children in their arms, fill the
city with their lamentations.
There is no shelter to be had, and
food is scarce.
Rome, Jan. L. Figures sent two
days agony on the catastrophe in
Sicily and Calabria, which estimat-
led the number of victims at 2OO,-
00G, are now confirmed.
Messina is now Thoroughly oc-
cupied by troops.
The sufferings of persons still
buried in the ruins of fallen build
ings here who are slowly dying from
hunger is awful to contemplate.
Dead bodies have been found which
bear mute testimony of the torture
endurd before death relieved their
sufferings. Several of these persons
have died gnawing at their arms
and hands, evidently delirious from
pain and hunger.
Exact statistics of the dead and
the surviving still are impossible to
obtain, because all the dead bodies
buried under the ruins have not
yet been excavated. 1t is equally
impossible to make any accurate
count of the survivors; for they are
to-day scatterd from one end of
the country to the other. The
only figures that can be given by
calculating the total populations
before the disaster and subtracting
therefrom thenumbers that are sup
posed to have survived.
The victims are increasing daily,
not only through the dying of the
injured, but also by the many sui
cides committed by desperate sur
vivors whose minds have given way.
The funds raised for the relief
work in many countries already
run to several million dollars, and
yet, as it is feared, the utmost
amount that may be raised will
fall short of what is needed. The
Italian government, 1T is thought,
will attempt to arrange for an i'm
mediate national loan.
Paris, Jan. 2.-The Figaro to-
day published the following dis
patch from Rome:
GAS each day goes by the disas-
ter appears more horrible, terrifying
and immense. 1t is without prece-
dent in the history of the world.
In my earlier dispatches ! spoke OF
over $50, 1000 dead.
"This number doubtless will be
exceeded for now it is conservative
lily estimated that 100000 persons
persisted miserably in this stagger-
ing catastrophe and the worst is
not yet known. The scourge has
not yet done It's final work.
"The tremblings of the earth con-
tinues with sinister. rumblings and
at times jets of boiling water surge
from the crevasses. The sources
of the streams are poisoned with
putrid matter"
The stories of the terrible suffer
ing and distress of the survivors OF
the earthquake disaster, no less
than the appalling loss of life and
destruction of property, has caused
the whole civilized world to open
it's heart to the stricken country,
and contributions are pouring in.
The aggregare from the United
States and Canada alone is expect
ed to run into the millions.
Washington, Jan. 4.-Congress
today appropriated $SOO,OOO for
the relief of the stricken people in
the Italian earthquake zone.
This, the most generous fund
ever contributed by the American
people for the succor of sufferers in
other lands, is to supplement the
dispatch of the supply ships Celtic
from New York and the Culgoa
from Port Said for Messina with
their big cargoes of necessarles,
originally intended for the Ameri-
can fleet, diverted to the immedl-
ate use of the Italian victims.
Messina, Jan. 5. The first cases
of typhoid fever have broken out.
This fact will cause drastic action
to be taken Immediately in the dis
posal of the dead
The hope of rescuing any of the
living beneath the ruins has now
been abandoned.
w. A.,ll not dAlnu tokinn Eo-