NEWS OF THE WEEK.
ONE of the most fearful catastrophes of a generation rich in catastrophes took place in the beautiful island of Ischia, in the Bay of Naples, last Saturday, when an earthquake de- stroyed the towns of the island, and buried some 3,000 persons at least, in their ruins,—many compute the dead alone at 4,000. It was about half-past nine in the evening ; the theatre was open in Casamicciola, and the curtain bad just drawn up; in the chief hotel a Welsh gentleman—who perished,—was playing a"funeral march," when suddenly a shock brought down most of the walls in the island; a visitor in his room on the fourth story of the hotel found himself wounded and bleeding in the street ; in the theatre there was a confused heap of human beings, and the flaming oil tf the petroleum lamps was running all over the benches ; the ground rose and fell as if it were sea ; and the shrieks of the dying in the streets, and of the mothers who feared that their husbands or children were killed, made one vast and frightful confusion. Even yesterday there had been, at the end of six days, no complete exhumation of the living and the dead, and the decomposition had been so rapid that latterly the civilians had refused to proceed with it, and the duty was left to the soldiers. Hundreds of injured and mutilated persona had been removed to Naples, but for every injured person saved there seem to have been four or five buried under the rains of the little Ischian towns. Ischia was this year quite the favourite watering-place of the Roman nobles, and amongst the victims of the earthquake are a great many distinguished Italian families.
