Fig. 43 represents the appearance of certain fissures in a part of Calabria during this earthquake. These cracks, it will be noticed, radiate or pass outward in all directions from a central point, just like the cracks that are formed in a glass window pane when it is fractured by a stone thrown against it. Of course, the most violent effects were near the origin of the earthquake at Oppido. Here the formation of deep fissures was common. In another part of the country a number of buildings were suddenly swallowed up in a central chasm, which almost immediately closed, thus permanently burying all these objects. Some idea of the force with which the fissures were afterwards closed can be formed by reflecting on a case where, in order to recover some of the buried articles, the ground was dug up at these points, and it was found that the materials, human bodies and other objects, were so jammed together as to make one compact mass. To Sir William Hamilton a place was shown where the fissures, though, when he saw them, they were not more than a foot in width, had opened sufficiently wide during the shock to swallow up a hundred goats as well as an ox. An earthquake that caused such marked changes in the appearance of the earth's surface, naturally made great changes in the direction of the rivers. In one case the end of a small valley was so completely filled with stones and dirt that the water was dammed up, producing a lake two miles in length and one mile in breadth. In a similar manner no less than 215 lakes were formed in different portions of Calabria. Of course, in the flat country at the base of the Apennines, frequent landslides occurred, the land sliding into great chasms and continuing to move down them for considerable distances, so that in many places pieces of land containing olive trees, vineyards, and green fields, were bodily transported for distances of several miles. This, moreover, was done so quietly as to leave the houses entirely uninjured, and the trees and other vegetation continuing to grow up with apparently no marked decrease in vitality. As is usual in such cases, the sudden and strong blows acting on the waters of the sea, killed great numbers of fish just as does the explosion of dynamite at a point below the surface of the water; and in a similar way the fish that usually live at the bottom of the sea in the soft mud, being disturbed by the earthquake shocks, came near the surface where they were caught in vast numbers. It is an interesting fact that during this earthquake the volcano of Stromboli showed a marked decrease in the volume of smoke it gave out. Etna, however, was observed to emit large quantities of vapor during the convulsion.