The Alexandria Herald

DREADFUL EARTHQUAKE
From the Austrian Observer, of the 23d Sept

We have received calamitous news of an earthquake in Aleppo. A letter from Constantinople, dated Sept., describes this event in the following manner:-

Aleppo, one of the most beautiful cities of the Ottoman empire, has been visited by an earthquake resembling those which laid waste Lisbon, and Calabria in the last century. The first and most severe shock occurred on the 15th of August, about ten in the evening and instantly buried thousands of the inhabitants under the ruins of their elegant mansions of stone, some of which deserve the name of palaces. Several other shocks succeeded, and even on the 16th shocks were still experienced, some of which were severe. Two-thirds of this populous city are in ruins, and along with them an immense quantity of valuable goods of all kinds from Persia have been destroyed.

"According to the first accounts of this event, which through alarm may have been exaggerated, the number of the sufferers amounts to from 25 to 30,000.—Among them is one of the best men in the city, the imperial consul general, the chevalier Esdras Von Piecotto. Having escaped the danger of being buried under the ruins of his own house, he hastened with some of his family towards the gate of the city: but as he was passing a khan, a new shock occurred, and a wall fell down, which buried him and those with him. Tartars who have arrived from Damascus, report that they saw the whole population of Aleppo encamped in the environs. They state that several other towns in the Pachalik of Aleppo and Tripoli, particularly Antioch and Laodicea, have been destroyed by this earthquake. The captain of a French ship also has reported that two rocks, at the time of the earthquake, had risen from the sea in the neighborhood of Cyprus, which is almost under the same latitude as Aleppo. As soon as the Arabs and the Bedouins of the Syrian desert obtained information of the calamity which had befallen Aleppo, they hastened in hordes to exercise their trade of plunder in that immense grave. Behrem Pacha, however, drove them back, and also several Janissaries, who had committed depredations among the dead bodies and ruins. The great number of unburied bodies in this extremely hot period of the year has produced pestilential effluvia, and obliged the unfortunate inhabitants to seek for refuge in some remote district."

The number of houses in this city is stated at 40,000 and of the inhabitants at 200,000.