The New York Times/1851/9/24/Earthquake in Naples

by Edward Joy Morris

Earthquake in Naples—Great Loss of Life.

The National Intelligencer of yesterday, publishes a letter from Hon. Joy Morris, U. S. chargé at Naples, descriptive of the terrible earthquake which occurred in the Western portion of that Kingdom, on the 14th ult. It is supposed that the loss of life will amount to more than two thousand five hundred souls.

The communication from Mr. Morris gives the following particulars of this lamentable event, more full than have appeared elsewhere:

To the Editors of the Washington Republic:

On the 14th ult. the western portion of the continental part of this kingdom, from the northern confines of Calabria to the Roman frontier, was agitated by several calamitous shocks of earthquake. This convulsion appears to have had its origin in the volcanic region of Mount Volture, about one hundred miles to the south-east of Naples. It is a detached and isolated eminence, three thousand feet in elevation, rising at the point where the Appenine chain terminates, on the borders of Basilicata and Apulia; its slope and summits are broken into numerous craters, of the vitality of which no record exists, but which yet bear unmistakable evidences of eruptive violence at some remote period.

The city of Melfi, separated from Mount Volture by a deep ravine, is built upon the summit of a hill, the composition of which is grey lava, intersected by strata of travertine upon layers of ashes, sand, tufa, and decomposed stalactites, all denoting the site of an extinct or dormant volcano. Previous to the first shock a small stream which runs near the town suddenly disappeared and the shepherds on the mountain were alarmed by loud rumbling noises beneath their feet. The monks of an adjoining convent, admonished by these phenomena, escaped from their building almost at the moment it was rent in twain. At the first shock, Melfi, which contains ten thousand inhabitants, was prostrated in the dust, nothing but a few crumbling walls surviving the general ruin. An unknown number of its inhabitants were buried under the falling mass of fabrics; up to the present moment seven hundred dead bodies have been disinterred, and others are constantly being found; more than two hundred persons lie in an adjacent hospital, suffering under grievous wounds, while many have been dug out alive from the ruins. Among others, a female infant a year old, after lying buried for two days, was brought out living and unharmed, and restored to its afflicted mother, widowed by this same calamity.

The neighboring towns of Atella, Rionero, Barile, and Rapolla, are sufferers by the same convulsion. Rienero is a general wreck, not a sound house remaining—more than a hundred persons have perished, and as many have been maimed or wounded. In Barile, the only edifice not entirely destroyed is the orphan asylum, while the discovered dead amount to about one hundred and fifty. In the commune of Bari, the towns of Cerato, Minervino, Spinazola, Andria, and Trani were all injured more or less. In Canosa, the ancient Canosium, founded by Diomed, and whose walls once enclosed a circuit of sixteen miles, three hundred and seventy-six houses were thrown down. At the last reports the shocks around Mt. Volture continued, and one-half of the city of Venosa, the ancient Venusia, containing six thousand inhabitants, and celebrated as the birthplace of Horace, was destroyed. The mountain provinces of the Abruzzi and of Calabria, where the earthquake of 1782 destroyed three hundred cities and buried thirty thousand human beings, have thus far escaped.

The recent earthquake commenced with a sharp concussion, which was succeeded by an undulatory movement, the first shock being about sixty seconds in duration. At Melfi there were six shocks, the first at 2¼ P. M., the second at 3¼, the third at 4¾, the fourth at 10 P. M., the fifth at 3 A. M. and the sixth at 7 A. M.

At my summer residence in the country, eighty miles from Melfi, the house shook to its foundations; and, such was the vibration, that it was difficult to ascend the staircase. For ten minutes previous the house-dog howled in most dismal tones, the chickens cackled and hurried about as if fleeing from some anticipated danger, and a pair of turkeys rose in the air and flew around the house screaming as if seized by secret terror, while all the dogs in the neighborhood were in full bay. No damage was done at La Cava, or at Naples, beyond slight cracks in old walls.

All eyes are now turned upon Vesuvius as the safty-valve through which the struggling subterranean fires and steam may find a safe vent; and it is generally supposed that an eruption is imminent, although no local signs are yet apparent. The whole country, from Naples to Reggio and the Straits of Messina, is a volcanic region, forming that great viaduct of fire which flows from Ætna to Vesuvius. Stromboli, in the Lipara group, which has been burning for three hundred years before the Christian era down to the present time, is one of the escape-pipes of this field of submarine and subterranean combustion, but it is inadequate to those great occasions when the gases of the over-charged earth seek a vent; Vesuvius or Ætna are almost equal to such emergencies.

It is a curious fact that the apparently extinct volcanoes often produce the greatest devastation. Vesuvius was silent for an immemorial period down to A. D. 79, the date of the destruction of Herculanæum and Pompeii. After a long interval of slumber, Mount Epomeo in Ischia, burst out, A. D. 1301, and covered the whole island with a deluge of lava; and 1538 Monte Nuovo, in the Campi Phlegraei, in thirty-six hours rose from the bowels of the earth to a height of four hundred and forty feet, near the site of an old crater. The Solfaterra, in the same vicinity, continues to smoke, while the twenty-six craters around it, superficially judging, are extinct. It would be a rash prediction, however, to make, that they will never return to life so long as the smoke issuing from the Solfaterra indicates the existence of a bed of living fire around their foundations. From the formation of this latter crater a theory of volcanic action may be deduced, which, whether just or not, possesses some plausibility. From forty to fifty feet below the survace of the Solfaterra, in sinking pits of sulphur, boiling water is always found, which heats the sand up to the surface, as any one may test by collecting a handful; and it also has the effect, with the underlying heat, to boil the water in the alum vats, sunk a few feet in the earth. Steam and smoke are constantly issuing from the summits of the hills around the crater, as well as from a large cavity at their base, all indicating that the earthy strata rests upon a lake of water, beneath which is a fiery furnace. This probably is the formation of Vesuvius and all other volcanoes, which, if it be the case, may explain their eruptions by the agency of these subterranean waters heated into steam, and, when choked or overcharged from distant and communicating sources of combustion, bursting like a boiler, and furiously exploding into the air the superincumbent mass and their obstructing contents. This supposition derives some support from the fact that boiling water is always ejected in eruptions.

The loss of life from the earthquake of the 14th ult., it is supposed, will amount to more than two thousand five hundred souls. Every effort is making by the proper authorities to mitigate the calamity, and the government has already contributed ten thousand ducats to the relief of the survivors. It is to be hoped that fresh disasters may not arise, but serious apprehensions will be felt on the subject until Ætna or Vesuvius get into action.

Truly yours,

Edward Joy Morris.