Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/225

164 or, confining the calculation to the deaths only, we have 1 in every 21.5 of the population destroyed.

These returns, however, only referred to the towns. The mortality and injuries in solitary houses and small outlying hamlets, seem never to have been collected, and the policy of government was in every case, systematically to underrate the destruction of life and property.

The population embraced in the preceding returns is not one-half that of the province of Basilicata alone. It is quite probable, therefore, that the total number of deaths alone exceeded 10,000, and that the number lamed or injured was above 2,000.

The total of both has been estimated, upon plausible grounds, as high as 19,000. I believe the numbers above given, however, are much nearer the truth. An appalling mass of human misery, almost the whole of which was preventable by the exercise of proper care in choice of the methods of construction of the houses in the earthquake region, and future repetitions of which might thus be completely avoided.