SOME GREAT CATASTROPHES.
"It is the general opinion that earthquakes constitute the mostterrible of the world's catastrophes, both as regards loss of lifeand destruction of property," says an English writer. "This, however,is not so. The convulsion in southern Italy killed not less than twohundred thousand people, and in this respect it is easily the mostdreadful occurrence of its kind. The historic Lisbon earthquake, whichranks next below it in regard to the number of fatalities, causedfifty thousand deaths in that one city alone and about an equal numberelsewhere. The South American one of 1867 was responsible for thirtythousand. That which destroyed Aleppo in 1822 slew twenty thousand.These are the four worst earthquakes concerning which anything likereliable statistics are obtainable, and the total combined loss oflife, it will be observed, did not, at any rate, exceed three hundredand fifty thousand.
"But when the Yellow River burst its banks in September, 1887, morethan seven million people were drowned in the resultant great flood,which covered to an average depth of six feet a populous Chineseprovince the size of Scotland. Thus, in this one catastrophe, morelives were lost than in all the earthquakes recorded in the world'shistory. Then, again, there is pestilence. The black death killed inChina, where it broke out, thirteen million people; in the rest ofAsia, twenty-four million, and thirty million in Europe, or sixty-sevenmillion in all. In India alone, and that within the past twelve years,bubonic plague has slain over six million people, and the epidemicstill rages.
"Famines run plagues a close second. The one that raged in Bombay andMadras in 1877 slew five million people; and that which prevailed innorthern China in the same year, and which was due to the same climaticcauses, cost nine million five hundred thousand lives."
Motor Matt's Double Trouble; or, The Last of the Hoodoo Page 21