So Dolomieu, speaking of the depravation incroyable des moeurs which
accompanied the earthquake of 1783, recounts the case of a householder
of Polistena who was pinned down under some masonry, his legs emerging
out of the ruins; his servant came and took the silver buckles off his
shoes and then fled, without attempting to free him. We have seen
something of this kind more recently at San Francisco.
"After despoiling the corpses, they ransacked the dwellings. Five
thousand beds, sir, were carried up from Reggio into the mountains."
"Five thousand beds! Per Dio! It seems a considerable number."
A young fellow, one of the survivors, attached himself to me in the
capacity of guide through the ruins of Reggio. He wore the
characteristic earthquake look, a dazed and bewildered expression of
countenance; he spoke in a singularly deliberate manner. Knowing the
country, I was soon bending my steps in the direction of the cemetery,
chiefly for the sake of the exquisite view from those windswept heights,
and to breathe more freely after the dust and desolation of the lower
parts. This burial-ground is in the same state as that of Messina, once
the pride of its citizens; the insane frolic of nature has not respected
the slumber of the dead or their commemorative shrines; it has made a
mockery of the place, twisting the solemn monuments into repulsive and
irreverential shapes.
But who can recount the freaks of stone and iron during those
moments - the hair-breadth escapes? My companion's case was miraculous
enough. Awakened from sleep with the first shock, he saw, by the dim
light of the lamp which burns in all their bedrooms, the wall at his
bedside weirdly gaping asunder. He darted to reach the opening, but it
closed again and caught his arm in a stony grip. Hours seemed to
pass - the pain was past enduring; then the kindly cleft yawned once
more, allowing him to jump into the garden below. Simultaneously he
heard a crash as the inner rooms of the house fell; then climbed aloft,
and for four days wandered among the bleak, wet hills. Thousands were in
the same plight.
I asked what he found to eat.
"Erba, Signore. We all did. You could not touch property; a single
orange, and they would have killed you."
Grass!
He bore a name renowned in the past, but his home being turned into a
dust-heap under which his money, papers and furniture, his two parents
and brothers, are still lying, he now gains a livelihood by carrying
vegetables and fruit from the harbour to the collection of sheds
honoured by the name of market. Later in the day we happened to walk
past the very mansion, which lies near the quay. "Here is my house and
my family," he remarked, indicating, with a gesture of antique
resignation, a pile of wreckage.
