SOME FAMOUS EARTHQUAKES 



stand still, as they will sometimes seem to do from the 

 deck of a tossing ship. The fissures which appeared in 

 the ground were numbered by thousands, and sometimes 

 the displacements of the earth amounted to as much as 

 ten feet. Houses were lifted high up ; in other places 

 the land or the sea-floor sank several feet. Many of the 

 fissures opened, spurted out sand or water, and then 

 closed again ; and some of the Calabrian plains after 

 the earthquake were found to be dotted with circular 

 hollows, on the average about the size of carriage wheels, 

 which were like wells, but were sometimes filled with sand 

 instead of water. These were afterwards found to be 

 V-shaped. In addition to these hundreds of small cone- 

 shaped hollows or wells there were other water basins 

 more deserving the name of ponds or lakes. One of these 

 in the neighbourhood of Seminara, to which the name of 

 Lago di Tolfilo was given, was about a third of a mile in 

 length, and was so copiously fed by the springs ranged in 

 a fissure in its bottom that all attempts to drain it proved 

 useless. Near Sitizam a valley was completely choked up 

 by the landslip from opposite sides, and behind this new 

 dam a lake was formed which was about two miles in 

 length and one mile in breadth. Vivenzio states that 

 fifty lakes arose at the time of the earthquake, and the 

 Government surveyors, who included ponds, counted no 

 fewer than 215. The first effect of the more violent 

 shocks was generally to dry up the rivers. Immediately 

 afterwards many of their beds were so blocked up over 

 them that the rivers overflowed. From the rock of Scylla 

 opposite to Chary bd is, in the Straits of Messina, large 



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