The portion of the earth’s surface convulsed by this earthquake is estimated by Humboldt to have been four times greater than the whole extent of Europe.  The shocks were felt not only over the Spanish peninsula, but in Morocco and Algeria they were nearly as violent.  At a place about twenty-four miles from the city of Morocco, there is said to have occurred a catastrophe much resembling what took place at the Lisbon mole.  A great fissure opened in the earth, and an entire village, with all its inhabitants, upwards of 8,000 in number, were precipitated into the gulf, which immediately closed over its prey.

EARTHQUAKES IN CALABRIA

Of the numerous other examples of destructive earthquakes which might be chosen from Old World annals, it will not be amiss to append a brief account of those which took place in Calabria, Italy, in 1783.  These, while less wide-spread in their influence, were much longer in duration than the Lisbon cataclysm, since they continued, at intervals, from the 5th of February until the end of the year.  The shocks were felt all over Sicily and as far north as Naples, but the area of severe convulsion was comparatively limited, not exceeding five hundred square miles.

The centre of disturbance seems to have been under the town of Oppido in the farther Calabria, and it extended in every direction from that spot to a distance of about twenty-two miles, with such violence as to overthrow every city, town and village lying within that circle.  This ruin was accomplished by the first shock on the 5th of February.  The second, of equal violence, on the 28th of March, was less destructive, only because little or nothing had been left for it to overthrow.

At Oppido the motion was in the nature of a vertical upheaval of the ground, which was accompanied by the opening of numerous large chasms, into some of which many houses were ingulfed, the chasms closing over them again almost immediately.  The town itself was situated on the summit of a hill, flanked by five steep and difficult slopes; it was so completely overthrown by the first shock that scarcely a fragment of wall was left standing.  The hill itself was not thrown down, but a fort which commanded the approach to the place was hurled into the gorge below.  It was on the flats immediately surrounding the site of the town and on the rising grounds beyond them that the great fissures and chasms were opened.  On the slope of one of the hills opposite the town there appeared a vast chasm, in which a large quantity of soil covered with vines and olive-trees was engulfed.  This chasm remained open after the shock, and was somewhat in the form of an amphitheatre, 500 feet long and 200 feet in depth.

MOST CALAMITOUS OF THE LANDSLIPS