204 Sir WTLtrAM HAMILTON^ Account of 
from it, is decifve. A fact which I was told, and which was 
attefted by many here, is very extraordinary indeed : a woman of 
Scilla, four months gone with child, was fwept into the fea 
by the wave, and was taken up alive, floating on her back at 
fome diftance, nine hours after. She did not even mifcarry, 
and is- now perfectly well ; and, had file not been gone up 
into the country, they would have fhewn her to me. They 
told me, fhe had been ufed to fwim, as do moft of the women 
in this part of Calabria. Her anxiety and lufferings, however, 
had arrived at fo great a pitch,, that juft at the time that the 
boat, which took her up, appeared, fhe was trying to force 
her head under water, to put a period to her miferable exiftence. 
The Padre Minafi told me another curious circumftance that 
happened in this neighbourhood, which to his knowledge was 
ftritlly true. A girl cf about eighteen years of age, was 
buried under the ruins of a houfe fix days, having had her 
foot, at the ancle, almoft cut off by the edge of a barrel 
that fell upon it ; the duft and mortar flopped the blood £ 
fhe never had the affiftance of a furgeon ; but the foot of 
itfelf dropped off, and the wound is perfe&ly healed without 
any other affiftance but that of nature. If of fuch extraor- 
nary circumftances, and of hair-breadth efcapes, an account 
was to be taken in all the deftroyed towns of Calabria Ultra 
and Sicily, they would, as I faid before, compofe a large vo- 
lume. I have only recorded a few of the moft extraordinary, 
and fuch as I had from the moft undoubted authority. In my 
way back to Naples (where I arrived the 23d of May) along 
the coaft of the two Calabrias and the Principato Citra, I only 
went on fhore at Tropea, Paula, and in the Bay of Palinurus. 
I found Tropea (beautifully lituated on a rock overhanging the 
fea) but little damaged ; however, all the inhabitants were in 
5 barracks. 
