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had prevailed for some time, but the day itself was very fine. I had been up very early, and at a quarter before eight A.M. I felt the dreadful sensation. The moving walls and rattling doors announced the mysterious stranger. The shock lasted only a few seconds; but it cracked some of the ceilings in two or three places.

Our house was considered, as regards earthquakes, the most unsafe habitation in the town. It rested partly on the Mole, built by Sir Charles Napier, the ground being formerly under water. Its height of three stories added to the danger. It had been built about twenty years, and there were some splits in the outer wall facing the north, which had been occasioned by shocks fourteen years ago. The shock of the 8th was only the beginning of troubles. Before a week had elapsed we had experienced four earthquakes-one of them more severe than any since 1833. On Monday, the 10th, about two P.M., I fancied that my eldest little girl was playing with the handle of the door of my This was the first sign of our second earthquake. As in the first case, the weather was fine. after a day of wind and storm. The temperature was cold, and the barometer appeared to be wholly unaffected on both occasions. Earthquake No. 3 happened on the 13th at ten P.M. The motion was something like a steamer rolling at sea. My wife was sitting at the time alone in the drawing-room.

room.

When the shaking began, she, with great presence of mind, and a laudable eye to economy, seized hold of the moderator lamp to prevent it from falling.

I began to be seriously alarmed. With a wife and two children at the second story of a house reputed unsafe, my position was by no means enviable. It appeared bad, indeed, but worse remained behind.

Few of the English then in Cephalonia will ever forget Friday, the 14th of March, 1862. At halfpast four that morning occurred the greatest earthquake felt for some years past in the Ionian Islands. In our house every one was fast asleep, in profound darkness; but all were suddenly and startlingly awakened by a tremendous crash. It appeared to me as if the end of all things were at hand, and that I was hastening to eternity! It was as if everything and everybody were falling and crashing together. A violent hurricane of wind, with a noise like the discharge of a huge piece of ordnance, accompanied the shock; whilst the house, rattling, shaking, bounding, completed the terrible sublimity of the moment. There was, I feel sure, few Englishmen who did not pass those seconds, which appeared like minutes—that is, if their minds were sufficiently clear-in recommending themselves to the care of him who "rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." When those ten or twelve seconds of horror

had passed away, the sense of relief was beyond the power of description.

The damage done to our house by this shock was far less than I expected, but it was sufficiently alarming. The ceilings of our eight rooms were all more or less cracked and split, with a good deal of mortar on the floors of some of them. The ceiling of one room was opened out from the wall, as if the house were slightly leaning towards one side. In one corner of our dining-room a crevice had been opened all down the partition. The outer wall of the house was bulged out which faced the north-west, from which the earthquake appeared to come. Some new splits were made outside, and some old ones widened. The rooms below occupied by young English officers were still more injured and shaken, with the exception of our dining-room wall, which was the worst of all the damage done to the house. One young Briton rushed as quick as he could out of the house in his night-shirt; and I am not sure that I would not have done the same if I had had no wife or children to take care of. The motion of this shock was of the most dangerous kind-the "saltatory," or up and down movement. Had it lasted a minute, I think that the house must have fallen. Of many a mortal it might then have been truly said,

"A fate so near him chill'd his soul with dread."

The general opinion was that another similar

shock would bring the house down. Few houses in Argostoli escaped considerable damage. In Lixuri, which lies to the north-west of Argostoli, on the other side of the harbour, the houses were much more injured on this occasion. The small detachment of soldiers stationed there abandoned the hired house which they occupied in great alarm. They were brought in the course of the day to Argostoli, till arrangements could be made at Lixuri for encamping them outside the town. The house which they had occupied was reported as wholly untenable, so split and opened were the walls, and so unsafe appeared the roof.

I began now to make preparations for removing from my apartments in the great house on the Mole of Argostoli. Every one, except my landlord, advised us to seek a safer habitation. My wife and I, therefore, commenced house-hunting; but we could nowhere find quarters so suitable for an English family as those we already occupied. We therefore finally determined to remain where we were. In coming to this resolve we were far from meeting with general encouragement. Our friends shook their heads, and looked serious. The amiable Resident gave me the very unpleasant information, that whenever a severe earthquake occurred his first operation was to ascend to the flat of his roof to see if the lofty house on the Mole were still visible. The Professor also, who instructed me in modern

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Greek, kindly imparted to me similar consolation. Nay, he went further, and said that he always hastened to our house to give assistance if necessary, so probable did he consider the fall of our house. Other gentlemen assured me that the boatmen coming from Lixuri, after a severe shock, always looked out for the great house, satisfied that if that were still standing no house in the town could have fallen.

The same earthquake was felt in Corfu, though with much less violence and with very little damage. Still it created great alarm in the capital, where shocks of any severity had not been previously felt for very many years. Zante and Santa Maura, the usual sufferers, escaped violent shocks in 1862. It looked as if those subterranean visitations had slightly changed their line under the Islands, to the alarm of Corfu, but still more of Cephalonia. In the famous citadel of the former island the mortar dropped from the ceilings of the General's house, and the chimneys were so shaken that two of them fell shortly afterwards during a gale.

In superstitious times this selection of the General's house for its chief fury by the earthquake would have been considered ominous of a coming event; for a few months later the General, Sir John Inglis, the hero of Lucknow, died whilst on temporary leave in Italy, amidst the universal regret of both the English and the Corfiots.