The San Francisco Calamity by Earthquake and Fire
- Pages
- about 449
- Category
- History
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 8.2 h at 250 wpm
From the opening
INCLUDING GRAPHIC AND RELIABLE ACCOUNTS OF ALL GREAT EARTHQUAKES AND
VOLCANIC ERUPTIONS IN THE WORLD’S HISTORY, AND SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS
OF THEIR CAUSES.
Earthquake and famine, fire and sudden death--these are the destroyers
that men fear when they come singly; but upon the unhappy people of
California they came together, a hideous quartette, to slay human
beings, to blot from existence the wealth that represented prolonged and
strenuous effort, to bring hunger and speechless misery to three hundred
thousand homeless and terror-stricken people.
The full measure of the catastrophe can probably never be taken. The
summary cannot be made amid the panic, the confusion, the removal of
ancient landmarks, the complete subversion of the ordinary machinery
of society. When chaos comes, as it did in San Francisco, and all the
channels of familiar life are closed, and human anguish grows to be
intolerable, compilation of statistics is impossible, even if it were
not repugnant to the feelings. And when order is once more restored,
after the lapse of many weeks, months and perhaps years, the details of
the calamity have merged into one undecipherable mass of misery which
defies the analyst and the historian. It is the purpose of this book
faithfully to record the story of these awful days when years were lived
in a moment and to preserve an accurate chronicle of them, not only
for the people whose hearts yearn in sympathy to-day, but for their
posterity.
Other frightful catastrophes the world has known. The earthquake which
dropped Lisbon into the sea in 1755, and in a moment swallowed up
twenty-five thousand people, was perhaps more awful than the convulsion
which has brought woe to San Francisco. When Krakatoa Mountain, in the
Straits of Sunda, in 1883, split asunder and poured across the land a
mighty wave, in which thirty-six thousand human beings perished, the
results also were more terrible.
A short sample. Read the whole book
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