Quagmire

“ In summer it seems a vast moor carpeted by glowing purple heather, which one can traverse up to a 103 certain point, but woe betide him who would advance farther, for, surrounded by what seems solid ground, lies a treacherous quagmire declared by the people of the neighbourhood to be unfathomable. ”

“ QUAGMIRE, a bog or marsh, a piece of ground so saturated with water that it cannot support any weight. The word is composed of “quag” or “quake” (O.E. cwacian; cf. “quaver,” “quiver”) and “mire,” mud (Icel. myri, Swed. myr) . ”

“ The maze of quagmires, splintered woods, ruined husks of pill-boxes, water-filled shell-holes and foul creeks, which made up the land on both sides of the Menin road, was a sight which to most men must seem in the retrospect a fevered nightmare. ”

“ Every hole and hollow was full of water, and first one animal and then the other would291 stumble into them, both man and beast, I think, had the roughest time of their life that day, for at the best of it we were nearly up to our knees, and sometimes a good bit above them. At sundown Brown wanted to camp, but Whitefield urged us to push ahead until we reached more solid ground. After a few miles of this quagmire, which seemed to get worse, and when it was near midnight, we came up to some bushes or scrub ”

“ Country in which there are precipitous cliffs with torrents running between, deep natural hollows, confined places, tangled thickets, quagmires and crevasses, should be left with all possible speed and not approached.
16. While we keep away from such places, we should get the enemy to approach them; while we face them, we should let the enemy have them on his rear. ”

“ Our house rocked as if shaken by an earthquake, and we spent the night in extreme fear, either of being buried under the ruins of our factory, or of perishing along with it by fire; for all night long, the barbarous unruly common people ran up and down the streets with lighted firebrands, while the wind carried large pieces of burning wood quite over the tops of the houses, as it whirled up the burning timbers of the several houses previously thrown down, hurling fire through the air in great flakes, very fearful to behold, and threatening an entire conflagration of the town ”

“ We dropped nearly down to the roof level. The roof-structure was gone now over a segment of fully a mile. The beam, with Alan oscillating it, bathed the whole shattered area in white light. Indescribable scene of ruin! A vast honeycomb of metal city, shaken into ruins as though by some persistent earthquake; girders of metal piled in a tangled mass like jackstraws. Stone and mortar; plaster; wood—all the innumerable shattered substances strewn in a wreck inconceivable. Fires were starting in a dozen places; lurid glare of red-yellow flames; black smoke rolling up. ”

“ Suddenly the solid earth begins to tremble and quake; roars as of one of the buried giants of old strike all men with dread; then, with a fierce convulsion, a mountain is rent in twain and vast torrents of steam, burning rock, and blinding dust are hurled far upward into the air, to fall again and bury cities, perhaps, with all their inhabitants in indiscriminate ruin and death. ”

“ Every one feels thankful though that the weather still remains cold, and that the gradual putrefaction of the hundreds of bodies that still line the streams and lie hidden under the miles of driftwood and débris is not unduly hastened.
The peculiar stench of decaying human flesh is plainly perceptible to the senses as one ascends the bank of Stony Creek for a half mile along the smouldering ruins of the wreck, and the most skeptical now conceive the worst and realize that hundreds—aye, perhaps thousands—of bodies lie charred and blackened beneath this great funeral pyre. ”

“ A terrible storm came on with lightning, thunder, snow, hail, and wild pouring rains, so that everything was overthrown and inundated. After that an earthquake convulsed the ground, and on both sides the mountains fell into the valley, covering the Alm huts and meadows more than sixty feet deep with débris. The murderer was swallowed among the falling rocks, and is condemned to suffer dreadfully beneath them. He is still heard very often shrieking in agony, and all the pilgrimages which his family have made for his redemption have been in vain. ”

“ The snow drifts toward the smoking ruins. Nature weaves a white shroud.60 Night draws down a black pall. The silence of the grave settles upon the lonely spot. A flickering light from the funeral pyre sends up a glare through the darkness, and the dead stare from the blackened bars with eyeless sockets, and the bodies are left to burn.
It is a horrible, heart-sickening sight, the bodies still smoulder in the burning grave, and the smell of their flesh arises on the darkening air.
61
CHAPTER IX.
THE ROBBERS.
The fire continued to burn. For a time the wreck was left unguarded. ”

“ The city quivers in the throes of fierce, successive quakes, And massive structures thrill like giant oaks before the blast; Into the streets with deafening crash the frailer ones are cast. Half garbed, the multitude rush out in frantic haste, with prayer and shout, To join the panic stricken rout. Ho! DEATH is marching past. A rumbling noise! The streets upheave, and sink again, like waves; And shattered piles and shapeless wrecks are strewn with human graves. Danger at every corner lurks. Destruction fills the air. Death-laden showers of mortar, bricks, are falling everywhere. ”

“ And this, because time pressed, and we might not search in the wood, to seek the other end on’t, we did set about immediately, though doing our best to ride leisurely, so as any perceiving us might take us only for honest countrymen bent on their occasions. But when we come out upon the plain, our beasts and we were evidently visible against the clear green colour of the rushes by the side of the quag, and before we could even circle round the end on’t, the viscount bid me look round, and I obeying saw a troop of horse coming out of a gate of the castle in pursuit of us. ”

“ The quarry is full of noises—the clank of the pumps, the rattle of the trucks, the hiss of pneumatic and steam drills, the clink of tampers and the rumble and rattle of the great rocks dislodged by crowbars from the cliffs. Men shout, too, and their voices are as the drone of little gnats; but sometimes, at the hour of blasting, an immense volume of sound is liberated, and the thunder of the explosion crashes round and round the cup and wakes a war of echoes thrown from cliff to cliff. ”

“ Then fearfully a quake Pervades the lands, and 'long the lofty skies Run the far rumblings. For at such a time Nigh the whole tempest quakes, shook through and through, And roused are the roarings,—from which shock Comes such resounding and abounding rain, That all the murky ether seems to turn Now into rain, and, as it tumbles down, To summon the fields back to primeval floods: So big the rains that be sent down on men By burst of cloud and by the hurricane, What time the thunder-clap, from burning bolt That cracks the cloud, flies forth along. ”

“ The night was cold, and dark, and by the light of hurricane lamps, the doctors and the nurses set to work and cut away the torn and bloodstained garments and dressed the wounds of the gory, groaning, battered objects, who were placed upon the ground, round impromptu bonfires, which we made of hay, and straw, and wood, to give warmth. One man was already dead; I ordered a grave to be dug, saw that it was the regulation depth—three feet—and then sent to another column for a priest. ”

“ Their houses were violently shaken to and fro, and on all sides were heard the awful crashings of falling walls, chimneys, and buildings, together with the death-shrieks of those caught in the ruins. Rushing madly into the streets they could see on every side evidences of destruction; for, in almost every direction, were heaps of fallen buildings, still being violently shaken by the earthquake waves that rapidly passed through the solid earth. Huge cracks or crevices had been formed in the streets, while the heavy rails of the trolley tracks had been bent and twisted by the mighty forces. ”

“ Disturbed by the initial quake, the people of the city fled to the cathedral or local shrines, sought refuge in fancied strongholds, or ran aimlessly about; when caught by the black cyclone, they were thrown against walls and amidst wreckage, bruised and burned by the red-hot rocks pouring from above, and suffocated by sulphurous fumes; then, when the gas-cloud caught fire from its own lightning or from molten rock, every living thing was scorched, seared or baked according to the local conditions of the burning. ”

“ In all directions might be seen heaps of ruins, houses tottering, cracked, twisted—in all stages of destruction. Ever and anon a fresh shock brought down some crumbling edifice with a sullen roar, and a cloud of stifling dust{555} veiled it from view. The night resounded with the screams of terrified fugitives, the tread of hurrying feet, and the groans and cries of the wounded. The parks swarmed with those in search of a place of safety. Hundreds were bruised or maimed by falling stones and timbers; not a few were killed outright; others, crushed in the wrecks, died a lingering death. ”

“ It was hard to tell which frightened one the most, the terrible rain-storms or the awful earthquakes. In the house there was a magnificent glass chandelier. The first time we had a severe earthquake that chandelier swayed back and forth in such a wild way that it seemed as if it must fall and crush every prism, tiny light, and bell. I felt sure whenever a quake began that I should not live through it. ”

“ Again and again the trembling of the earth passed by, three quickly repeated shocks, and the work of the demon of ruin was done. People woke with a start to find themselves flung from their beds to the floor, many of them covered with the fragments of broken ceilings, many lost among the ruins of falling floors and walls, many pinned in agonizing suffering under the ruins of their houses, which had been utterly wrecked in those fatal seconds. Many there were, indeed, who had been flung to quick if not to instant death under their ruined homes. ”

“ Actuated by such sentiments as these, the Quakers have discarded all parade at their funerals. When they die, they are buried in a manner singularly plain. The corpse is deposited in a plain coffin. When carried to the meeting-house or grave-yard, it is attended by relations and friends. These have nothing different at this time in their external garments from their ordinary dress. Neither man nor horse is apparelled for the purpose. All pomp and parade, however rich the deceased may have been, are banished from their funeral processions. ”

“ I am wise, I figure that a friendly quake will soon again set the earth aquiver, and once again it will destroy your city; and the walls will crumble, and my stone will drop and shatter the jailer’s head. And having shattered it, it will leave upon his soft waxy blood-grey brain the impress of my song of freedom, like the seal of a king, like a new commandment of wrath—and thus will the jailer go down to his grave. ”

“ Referring back to our illustration of the cathedral, we may say that streams and rivers play the part of cart and horses. They bring the materials down from the quarry to the scene of action,—the workshop where they are wanted. The quarries, in this case, may be said to be almost everywhere. For wherever rocks and soil are exposed to the action of wind and weather, there is certain to be more or less decay and crumbling away. But it is among the hills and in the higher parts of the mountains that the forces of destruction are most active. ”

“ Suddenly an ominous oppressiveness weighted the atmosphere, and, nature aghast, was as silent as death. Then from toward the south came a seismic wave, the ground trembled, heaved and burst asunder into yawning fissures, towering temples crashed to the ground in fragments, and public buildings and private dwellings were shaken from their foundations in ruinous masses. Fire added to the horror of the catastrophe and no one attempted to stay the conflagration. Terror-stricken, all who survived the sudden disaster strove to escape from the deadly peril to a place of safety. ”

“ So fierce was the fight that the combatants were wholly unconscious of an earthquake which, at the very hour when the battle raged most fiercely, laid more than one city in ruins, changed the courses of river, and brought down huge masses of earth and rock from the mountains to the plains. ”

“ As usual, the first work to be done was the digging of several graves, for the earthquake had found victims both in the refugees’ quarters and in the hospital, where two of the wounded had died of sheer terror, but when the funerals were over, the rubbish-heaps were attacked with a will. Stones and pieces of brickwork of manageable size were put aside to strengthen the makeshift rampart on the inner bank, while the dust and loose earth was carried some little distance, and spread evenly over the ground, so as to offer no cover whatever. ”

“ Towers, temples, homes, were torn up, scattered in fragments or crushed by falling rocks, and together with their inmates were ground to dust in the convulsion. Human beings were hurled high into the air and driven from point to point, until, they found graves fathoms deep below the earth's surface. ”

“ The demon of fire followed close upon the heels of the unseen fiend of the earth’s hidden caverns, and ran red-handed through the metropolis of the West, kindling a thousand unhurt buildings, while the horror-stricken people stood aghast in terror, as helpless to combat this new enemy as they were to check the ravages of the earthquake itself. ”