42 ABOUT VOLCANOS AND EARTHQUAKES. 



earthquake. The ground undulated like a ship at sea. 

 People became actually sea-sick, and to give an idea of 

 the undulation (just as it happens at sea), the scud of 

 the clouds before the wind seemed to be fitfully arrested 

 during the pitching movement when it took place in the 

 same direction, and to redouble its speed in the reverse 

 movement. At Oppido many houses were swallowed 

 up bodily. Loose objects were tossed up several yards 

 into the air. The flagstones in some places were found 

 after a severe shock all turned bottom upwards. Great 

 fissures opened in the earth, and at Terra Nova a mass 

 of rock 200 feet high and 400 in diameter travelled four 

 miles down a ravine. All landmarks were removed, and 

 the land itself, in some instances, with trees and hedges 

 growing on it, carried bodily away and set down in 

 another place. Altogether about 40,000 people perished 

 by the earthquakes, and some 20,000 more of the epide- 

 mic diseases produced by want and the effluvia of the 

 dead bodies. 



(55.) Volcanos occasionally break forth at the bottom 

 of the sea, and, when this is the case, the result is usually 

 the production of a new island. This, in many cases, 

 disappears soon after its formation, being composed of 

 loose and incoherent materials, which easily yield to the 

 destructive power of the waves. Such was the case with 

 the Island of Sabrina, thrown up, in 181 1, off St 

 Michaels, in the Azores, which disappeared almost as 

 soon as formed, and in that of Pantellaria, on the 

 Sicilian coast, which resisted longer, but was gradually 

 washed into a shoal, and at length has, we beUeve, com- 



