The Island of Scio

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1881

The Island of Scio.

The fearful earthquake disturbances, which have just resulted in such terrible loss of life at the beautiful and fertile island of Scio, or Chios, an island belonging to Turkey, off the west coast of Asia Minor, a few miles west of Cape Blanco, from which it is separated by straits about four miles wide, is a disaster of no ordinary magnitude, and clearly reveals a very unstable condition of the earth's crust in that locality. The city or town of Scio is situated in latitude 36° 33' north, longitude 26° 01' east, and the island, which was called by the ancients Chian, is credited with being the birth-place of the Grecian poet Homer, although Smyrna has sought to rob it of that honor. Its length from north to south is 32 miles; its breadth, 13 miles; and its area, 508 square miles. It is universally admitted to be one of the richest and most beautiful islands of the Levant. It produces wine of superior quality, mastic, silk, wool, cheese, figs, lemons, oranges, and other fruits. It raises corn or wheat, but other crops being more profitable, it imports a portion of the consumption used upon the island. In 1822 it was prosperous and its people flourishing as much as any among the famous Greek Archipelago; but the ruthless Turk invaded it with the cimeter of the Prophet, and from 120,000 to 130,000 of its inhabitants were massacred or sold into slavery by the Moslem invaders. Its present population is probably 75,000 or thereabouts, who are called Sciots, pronounced shee-ots or kee-ots, according as we accept the Cambridge or Oxford standard of Greek pronunciation.—Alta.