Excerpt from The San Francisco Calamity, by Earthquake and Fire: A Complete and Accurate Account of the Fearful Disaster Which Visited the Great City and the Pacific Coast, the Reign of Panic and Lawlessness, the Plight of 300, 000 Homeless People and the World-Wide Rush to the Rescue, Including Graphic and Reliable Ac
Tacitus relates how the palaces and noble residences of the beautiful and ancient city of Pompeii were buried in ashes fathoms deep when Vesuvius awoke in its wrath; and sacred history reveals the fate of the doomed Cities of the Plain when a rain of fire and brimstone poured down upon their spires and domes. No record of the past comes to us in more appalling form than these stories of sudden ruin and terrible slaughter by the elemental powers of the underworld. But once again, in our own days, these powers have awakened, and death and destruction have visited ancient and famous Messina, the noble city of the Straits and of Sunny Sicily.
Dreadful is the work that follows the clashing of sinking seas with the lakes of liquid fire pent up in the earth. Rack and ruin attend their meeting, and the dense solid shell of the earth is rent asunder by their might. It is to the battle of fire and water in the depths of the rocks that the volcano and the earthquake are due, and when these demons of the depths are at war man's puny strength is as powerless as that of the leaf before the cyclone. Then terror comes; then the earth trembles to its heart and is rent in twain; then the ashes of a terrible burning are cast forth to bury fertile plains and flourishing cities; then showers of burning rocks bombard the air and rivers of glowing lava scorch the earth, and human hopes and the results of man's labor are whelmed alike beneath the dread torrent of death and dismay.
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