The Gazette

Earthquake.

The son of a Merchant in Birmingham, who happened to be at Sienna, Tuscany, during the late earthquake there, has written the following account of it.

"Sienna, Sunday, May 27, '98.

Yesterday, at ten minutes past one, the most terrible earthquake ever felt in Sienna took place. I was writing in my room with Mr. H. when on a sudden a most violent concussive and reverberative motion almost threw us down, and affected us like an electric shock; the servant who was with us actually fell. It lasted half a minute, and then the most tremendous noise was heard from the bowels of the earth.

Aware that it was an earthquake, I cried out, run, run; our rooms were instantly filled with dust, and the mortar and bricks fell about our ears. On descending, we found all the city in consternation, the streets full of dust and fallen chimneys; and almost the first object I saw was a poor man wallowing in his blood, who had been thrown down from a scaffold. The streets resounding with the cries of women half distracted, while the men were engaged in collecting their straggled families. I soon returned into the house, and found our walls all cracked, brick floors burst asunder, windows broken and torn open, and in short, almost uninhabitable. We then went to the public walk called the Lizza, where was collected a vast concourse of people and carriages, all exhibiting indescribable scenes of pain and misery.

The earth on the walk was much cracked, and all the houses in the city split almost from top to bottom. Returning again home, we determined to go to Lady Carolina Spannochi's when a second shock made our room creak like a vessel in a storm. We found Lady C. in the utmost distress; a wall had fallen upon her eldest son, and twelve others of the scholars in the college of the city; his bruised arm had been taken off, but it was not expected he would live. Everywhere as we returned to our lodgings, we heard the cries of distress, and at half past eight o'clock we heard a third shock, more dreadful than the former, determined us at all events to quit the city. We passed the night on numbers of sofas, chairs, mattresses, &c. feeling an almost continual vibration of the earth. In the morning we returned to the city, and found it almost depopulated. The people were on the Lizza, under a kind of tents; the rich there, have no other habitation than their tents. The churches are all damaged and mass said in open air; indeed none of the public buildings can be safely used. Sienna appears to be ruined: another shock will raze it to the ground."

By the last accounts, small shocks of an earthquake still continue to be felt from time to time at Sienna, from whence a great number of inhabitants have fled to Leghorn.