The Hillsdale Standard

The Earthquake at Naples.
The Hon. E. Joy Moris, the American Minister to Naples, in a letter addressed to the Republic, gives a minute account of the terrible earthquake which occurred in the western portion of the kingdom of Naples on the 14th of July, by which some 2500 lives were lost, and several towns either totally prostrated or greatly damaged. Mr. Moris says, that previous to the shock a small stream that ran near the city of Melfi suddenly disappeared, and adds:

"At the first shock Melfi, which contains 10,000 inhabitants, was prostrated in the dust, nothing but a few crumbling walls surviving the general ruin. An unknown number of its inhabitants were buried under the falling mass of fabrics. Up to the present moment (Aug. 26th) 700 dead bodies have been disinterred, and many others are constantly being found. More than 200 persons lie in an adjacent hospital suffering under grievous wounds, while many have been dug out alive from the ruins. Among others, a female infant a year old, after lying buried for two days, was brought out living and restored to its afflicted mother widowed by the same calamity.

"The neighboring towns of Atella, Rionero, Barile and Rapolla, are sufferers by the same convulsion. Rionero is a general wreck, not a sound house remaining—more than a hundred persons have here perished, and as many have been maimed or wounded.

"The shocks and rumbling of the earth still occasionally occurred at the time of writing this letter, and all eyes were turned upon Vesuvius as the safety valve through which the struggling fires might escape, although no local signs were yet apparent.

In Barile, the only edifice not entirely destroyed is the orphan asylum, while the discovered dead amount to about one hundred and fifty. In the commune of Bari, the towns of Cerato, Minervino, Spinazzola, Andria, and Trani were all injured more or less.

In Canossa the ancient Canoatum, founded by Diomedes and whose walls once enclosed a circuit of sixteen miles, 376 houses are thrown down. At the last report, the shock around Mount Vulture continued, and one half of the city of Venosa, containing six thousand inhabitants, and celebrated as the birth place of Horace, was destroyed."