In nature there is nothing which can inspire us with so much awe as those violent outbreakings which occasionally convulse the earth, creating fearful devastation, overthrowing cities, and destroying much life and property. The following is a description of one which occurred in Calabria and Sicily in the year 1783; and which, from its violence, overthrew many cities, creating an universal consternation in the minds of the inhabitants of the two kingdoms.

On Wednesday, the fifth of February, about one in the afternoon, the earth was convulsed in that part of Calabria which is bounded by the rivers of Gallico and Metramo, by the mountains Jeio, Sagra, and Caulone, and the coast between these rivers and the Tuscan Sea. This district is called the Piana, because the country extends itself from the roots of the Appenines, in a plain, for twenty Italian miles in length by eighteen in breadth. The earthquake lasted about a hundred seconds. It was felt as far as Otranto, Palermo, Lipari, and the other Æolian isles; a little also in Apuglia, and the Terra di Cavoro; in Naples and the Abruzzi not at all. There stood in this plain a hundred and nine cities and villages, the habitations of a hundred and sixty-six thousand human beings; and in less than two minutes all these edifices were destroyed, with nearly thirty-two thousand individuals of every age, sex, and station,--the rich equally with the poor; for there existed no power of escaping from so sudden a destruction. The soil of the Piana was granite at the base of the Apennines, but in the plain the debris of every sort of earth, brought down from the mountains by the rains, constituted a mass of unequal solidity, resistance, weight, and form. On this account, whatever might have been the cause of the earthquake, whether volcanic or electrical, the movement assumed every possible direction--vertical, horizontal, oscillatory, vorticose, and pulsatory; producing every variety of destruction. In one place, a city or house was thrown down, in another it was immersed. Here, trees were buried to their topmost branches, beside others stripped and overturned. Some mountains opened in the middle, and dispersed their mass to the right and left, their summits disappearing, or being lost in the newly-formed valleys; others slipped from their foundations along with all their edifices, which sometimes were overthrown, but more rarely remained uninjured, and the inhabitants not even disturbed in their sleep. The earth opened in many places, forming frightful abysses; while, at a small distance, it rose into hills. The waters, too, changed their course; rivers uniting to form lakes, or spreading into marshes; disappearing, to rise again in new streams, through other banks, or running at large, to lay bare and desolate the most fertile fields. Nothing retained its ancient form, cities, roads, and boundaries vanished,--so that the inhabitants were bewildered as if in an unknown land. The works of art and of nature, the elaborations of centuries, together with many a stream and rock, coeval perhaps with the world itself, were in a single instant destroyed and overthrown.... Whirlwinds, tempests, the flames of volcanoes, and of burning edifices, rain, wind, and thunder, accompanied the movements of the earth: all the forces of nature were in activity, and it seemed as if all its laws were suspended, and the last hour of created things at hand. In the meantime, the sea between Scylla, Charybdis, and the coasts of Reggio and Messina, was raised many fathoms above its usual level; overflowing its banks, and then, in its return to its channel, carrying away men and beasts. By these means, two thousand persons lost their lives on Scylla alone, who were either congregated on the sands, or had escaped in boats, from the dangers of the dry land. Etna and Stromboli were in more than usual activity: but this hardly excited attention, amidst greater and graver disasters. A worse fire than that of the volcanoes resulted from the incidents of the earthquake; for the beams of the falling houses being ignited by the burning heaths, the flames, fanned by the winds, were so vast and fierce, that they seemed to issue from the bosom of the earth. The heavens, alternately cloudy or serene, had given no previous sign of the approaching calamity; but a new source of suffering followed it, in a thick fog, which obscured the light of the day, and added to the darkness of night. Irritating to the eyes, injurious to the respiration, fetid, and immoveable, it hung over the two Calabrias for more than twenty days,--an occasion of melancholy, disease, and annoyance, both to man and to animals....

At the first shock, no token, in heaven or on earth, had excited attention; but at the sudden movement, and at the aspect of destruction, an overwhelming terror seized on the general mind, insomuch, that the instinct of self-preservation was suspended, and men remained thunderstricken and immoveable. On the return of reason, the first sentiment was a sort of joy at the partial escape; but they soon gave place to grief for the loss of family, and the overthrow of the domestic habitation. Amidst so many aspects of death, and the apprehension even of approaching judgment, the suspicion that friends were yet alive under the ruins was the most excruciating affliction, since the impossibility of assisting them rendered their death--(miserable and terrible consolation)--a matter of preference and of hope. Fathers and husbands were seen wandering amidst the ruins that covered the objects of their affections, and, wanting the power to move the superincumbent masses, were calling in vain for the assistance of the bystanders; or haply they lay groaning, night and day, in their despair, upon the ruinous fragments. But the most horrid fate--(a fate too dreadful to conceive or to relate)--was theirs, who, buried alive beneath the fallen edifices, awaited, with an anxious and doubtful hope, the chances of relief--accusing, at first, the slowness, and then the avarice, of their dearest relations and friends; and when they sank under hunger and grief--with their senses and memory beginning to fail them--their last sentiment was that of indignation against their kindred, and hatred of humanity. Many were disinterred alive by their friends, and some by the earthquake itself; which, overthrowing the very ruins it had made, restored them to light. It was ultimately found, that about a fourth of those whose bodies were recovered, might have been saved, had timely assistance been at hand. The men were chiefly found in attitudes indicating an effort at escape, the women with their hands covering their face, or desperately plunged in their hair. Mothers were discovered dead who had striven to protect their infants with their own bodies, or lay with their arms stretched towards these objects of affection, when separated from them by intervening masses of ruin.