ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION (1909) - Disaster without parallel on the blood-stained pages of history; almost a quarter of a million of human beings swept into eternity in scarce more than the twinkling of an eye; thousands maimed and bruised and battered, bereft of home and family and driven to the verge of madness by their sufferings ; millions of dollars worth of property destroyed; half a dozen cities swept away in one supreme cataclysm and scores of lesser towns and villages wiped from the face of the earth.
That is the terrible story of the great earthquakes and tidal waves that devastated Southern Italy and Sicily in the closing days of 1908, to which is added graphic accounts of the eruptions of Etna, Vesuvius and other volcanoes, explaining the causes of earthquakes, tidal waves and volcanic eruptions.