Rensselaer Republican, Volume 21, Number 53, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 September 1889 — GREAT CATASTROPHES. [ARTICLE]

GREAT CATASTROPHES.

Loss of Life by Cataclysms and Earthquakes. In China, where some of the greatest rivers in the world flow between artificial banks at an elevation considerably above the surrounding country, there have been overflows that caused !the destruction of hundreds of thousands of lives. There have been similar disasters in India, where, as in China, the rivers had made beds for themselves with alluval banks higher than the plains across which they flowed. But aside from these fatal cataclysms, of which history and tradition recall but a few, there has not been within historic periods any disaster by water that caused so great a loss of life as that in Western Pennsylvania. It is now certain that not less than 10,000 or 12,000 lives were destroyed. No such catastrophe ever occurred in this country, if we except the greatest battles of the great civil war. The destruction of property also is immense—greater, probably, than that caused by the Chicago fire. There is no parallel to the immense destruction of life and property at Johnstown and in the vicinity, except ip, the great earthquakes of the world, that have buried whole cities, and caused the earth to open and swallow the inhabitants of entire areas of country. The earthquakes that occured before the Christian era are described In general terms as destroying citiej and depopulating entire countries, but po estimate of the loss of life is given. JSuch is also the case in regard to earthquakes that occurred after the Christian era, until the twelfth century. There is nO earthquake record anterior to 425 B. C., and but half a dozen earthquakes are recorded before that of A. D. 79, which buried Pompeii and Herculaneum; but there |s no statement of the loss of life by that event. In A. D., 543 there was in earthquake felt by the whole world. Great earthquakes occurred fn Asia in A. D. 742, the loss of life “surpassing all calculation.” The earthquakes in whicn approximate estimates of the loss of life, exceeding 5,000 or 6,000 are given, are as follows: Places. Lives Lost. A. D. Catania, Sicily 15,000 1137 Cilicia... 60,000 1208 Naples 40,000 1458 Lisbon 30,000 1581 Naples 70,000 1626 Scbaniaki, Russia. 80,000 1661 Sicily 100,000 1698 Jeddo, Japan 200,000 1703 Abruzzi, Italy 15,000 1706 Algiers 77.TT7. : ..80,000 1716 China, including Pekin 100,000 1731 Lima and Callao, Peru 18,000 1746 Grand Cairo 40,000 1753 Kaschan, Persia 40,030 1755 Lisbon 40,000 1755 Syria 20,000 1759 Mexico 40,000 1797 Aleppo, Turkey 20.000 1823 South Italy 14,000 1851 Peru and Ecuador 26,000 1868 Jwra 150,000 1881 There have been many earthquakes within the period covered by theso dates that have spread over vast extents of the earth’s surface and caused immense losses of life, but estimates as to numbers are not given. One instance shows how the human race has been depleted from this cause. In the kingdom of Naples, from 1783 to 1857, a period of seventy,-five years, the loss of life by earthquakes was, 111,000, or at the rate of more than 1,500 a year out of a population of 6,000,000. The country surrounding the Mediterranean and the inter-tropi-cal area from which the American Cordilleras spring, may be regarded •s the centers of earthquake activity, though some of the greatest earthquakes of all time have occurred in Eastern Asia and the East Indies.— Chicago Journal. The boy who goes barefooted has many a bootless chase.