The entire site of the village was reduced to a dead level and one found it difficult to believe that a town of fifteen hundred population had ever occupied the place. About nine hundred of the people of Pellaro were killed by the earthquake or tidal wave and hundreds of bodies were carried out to sea by the receding waters. [Illustration: STONES FROM PELLARO HOUSES, SWEPT BY TIDAL WAVE INTO LEMON ORCHARD.] _How Catania Helped._ As before mentioned, many Italian cities outside the earthquake zone received and cared for large numbers of earthquake victims. Catania in Sicily with about one hundred and fifty thousand population was closest of these outside cities to the scene of the disaster and was the most accessible of all. The result was that at least twenty-five thousand people from Messina and other destroyed towns were carried into Catania for care. Several thousand of these victims required hospital attention, and all the regular and many improvised hospitals were quickly crowded. The municipal authorities of Catania, with boundless generosity, undertook to provide shelter and support for this tremendous influx of helpless people. Numerous large institutions and vacant private buildings were converted into refuges. There had been no time to make proper preparation for the comfort of these people and it should not be held the fault of Catania that the conditions in the refuges quickly took on a deplorable character. The best of the refuges was that provided in the new municipal prison. This is a vast, massive stone building, with stone cells and the iron bars and grim, echoing corridors which characterize modern prisons. The building was barely completed and had never been occupied. Everything was clean and wholesome and sanitary provisions were ample. When I visited Catania in March twelve hundred men, women and children from Messina and other earthquake towns were living in this prison in comfort. It was strange to hear baby voices and the lullabys of women in the cells and about the long passages. The great number of cells made it possible to segregate the people by families or by sex and to give to each family a certain amount of privacy. Probably no other great prison ever received a dedication so strange as this. [Illustration: LADIES OF THE FRENCH RED CROSS SOCIETY NURSING IN NEAPOLITAN HOSPITAL.] _Bowdoin and Wood._