a hundred seconds.  It was felt as far as Otranto, Palermo, Lipari, and the other AEolian 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