Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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The sailor ashore in San Francisco may likely enough have an opportunity of feeling the tremor of an earthquake. As a rule, they have been exceedingly slight, but that of the 21st October, 1868, was a serious affair. Towers and steeples swayed to and fro: tall houses trembled, badly-built wooden houses became disjointed; walls fell. Many buildings, for some time afterwards, showed the effects in cracked walls and plastering, dislocated doors and window-frames. A writer in the Overland Monthly, soon after the event, put the matter forcibly when recalling the great earthquake of Lisbon. He said, “Over the parts of the city where ships anchored twenty years ago, they may anchor again,” for the worst effects were confined to the “made” ground—i.e., land reclaimed from the Bay. Dwellings on the rocky hills were scarcely injured at all, reminding us of the relative fates of the man “who built his house upon a rock” and of him who placed it on the sand. Four persons only were killed on that occasion, all of them from the fall of badly-constructed walls, loose parapets, &c. The alarm in the city was great; excited people rushing wildly through the streets, and frightened horses running through the crowds.