The subterranean concussions were felt beyond the confines of Sicily; but if the city of Oppido, in Calabria, be taken as the center, a circle around it, whose radius is twenty-two miles, would include the space which suffered the greatest calamities. Within this circle all the towns and villages were almost entirely destroyed. A radius of seventy-two miles would include the whole region affected. It was a calm, hazy day in February, 1783. At a [Illustration: REMAINS OF ANCIENT HEBREW MASONRY.] quarter to one o’clock was felt the first shock, which “threw down, in the space of two minutes, a greater part of the houses within the whole space above described. The convulsive motion of the earth is said to have resembled the rolling of the sea, and that in many instances it produced swimming of the head, like sea-sickness. This rolling of the surface, like the billows of the sea, was like that which would have been produced by the agitation of a vast mass of liquid matter under the ground. In some walls which were shattered, the separate stones were parted from the mortar, so as to leave an exact mold where they had rested, as though the stone had been carefully raised from its bed in a perpendicular direction; but in other instances the mortar was ground to powder between the stones, as though they had been made to revolve on each other. It was found that the swelling, or wave-like motions, and those which were called _vorticose_, or whirling, often produced the most singular and unaccountable effects. Thus, in some streets in the town of Monteleone, every house was thrown down, except one, and in some other streets all but two or three;” and these were left uninjured, though differing in no respect from others. In some houses which were wrecked, deep foundations were thrown clear out of the ground, as though upheaved by a direct lifting. Sometimes very massive buildings escaped; sometimes they suffered most. Obelisks and pillars made in sections showed the effects of the vorticose motion. The separate portions were partly turned upon each other, without being thrown down. The number and size of the fissures in the soil is astonishing. “In many instances, these fissures were so wide, as in an instant to swallow up men, trees, and even houses; and when the earth sunk down again, it closed upon them so entirely, as not to leave the least vestige of what had happened, nor were any signs of them ever discovered afterwards. In the vicinity of Oppido, the center of these convulsions, many houses were precipitated into the same great fissure, which immediately closed over them; and, [Illustration: GREAT EARTHQUAKE IN CALABRIA.] in the same neighborhood, four farm-houses, several oilstores and dwelling-houses were so entirely ingulfed that not a vestige of them was seen afterwards.