The Earthquake in Spain.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 84, 10 January 1885, Page 6

The Earthquake in Spain.

The condensed cable announcements of a series of earthquake shocks in .•.pain, which have caused the loss of 2,000 lives, are briefer than the ordinary paragraph in which a colonial newspaper would record the breaking of a man's leg. Such trivial records, set down with a matter-of-fact sort of air, mixed up with the price of frozen mutton, the latest Ho about annexation, or the contradiction of a false report circulated the day before, make no impression on the mind. This is what renders cable news the dullest of reading. But when we think what the few bald lines mean we begin to realise what a terrible disaster has befallen the peaceful populations of Malaga and Granada— villages, razed to the ground in a moment, burying their inhabitants alive, turning their homes into sepulchres. Of all calamities, that of earthquake is the most terrible : no human foresight can guard against its devastations, no human skill ward off its death-dealing and ruinous effects. The idea prevails that earthquakes are of much rarer occurrence and much less destructive than is actually the case. The year 1883 was one of extraordinary seismic activity in the earth's crust, and every quarter of the globe experienced shocks of greater or less severity. Mount Etna and its vicinity were violently agitated. In May, the eruption of a volcano on the Island of Krakatoa, in the Straits of Sunda, which had been extinct for two hundred years, caused widespread devastation and loss of life. During the same month many houses and people were destroyedby anearthquake inPersia. In June, a mountain in the neighbourhood of Czernowitz, in the Bukovina, became disturbed. The ground around its base opened to a depth of one thousand fathoms, engulphing villages. An eruption on the island of Ometepe, in the lake of Nicaragua, turned farms and fields into a waste of red-hot lava. At Casamicciola, in Ischia, on July 28th, between 4,000 and 5,000 people were killed by a violent shock. In August Krakatoa eclipsed its outbreak of May by one of the most terrible eruptions on record ; the whole sky was darkened with smoke and ashes, the neighbouring islands covered with debris, and a tidal wave raised to a height of nearly one hundred feet was sent along the Straits of Sunda, carrying away hundreds of coastal villages and destroying thousands of people. ; The effect of the wave was felt along the coasts of New Zealand. In October, 1,000 people were killed in Apia Minor by an earthquake, and there were other minor casualties in other parts of the earth. We have only enumerated the prominent earthquake shocks in ISB3, in which there was loss of life and destruction of property. England, Scotland, various parts of Canada, Cyprus, nearly every country in Europe, many districts of the United i States, Central and South America, and Asia [ experienced shocks of considerable severity. Since thegreat eartbquakeof Lisbon last coni tury, by which upwards of 30,000 people were killed, the Peninsula has enjoyed comparative immunity from disastrous earthquakes, but the late calamity, like the eruption of 1883, on the island of Krakatoa, shows that ! a long period of quiescence gives no assurance that the forces which produce these ; phenomena have ceased to operate.