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In Venice taxation was raised to the breaking strain to provide galleys wherewith to combat the foe, while the Genoese fortified their coasts and poured out money like water upon arms, armaments, and ammunition. Says Sandoval: "Desde el Estrecho de Meçina hasta el de Gibraltar ninguno de la parte de Europa pudiera tomer comida ni sueño seguro de lo que viviera en las riberas del mar."
Besides the above instances, there have been numerous failures within recent times of earthwork dams in Spain, the United States, Algeria, and elsewhere, such as that which occurred at Estrecho de Rientes, near Lorca, in Murcia, where a dam 150 ft. high, the construction of which for irrigation purposes was commenced in 1755 and completed in 1789, was filled for the first time in February, 1802, and two months later gave way, destroying part of the town of Lorca and devastating a large tract of the most fertile country, and causing the death of 600 people.
The Mill River reservoir disaster of May, 1874, with its 200 lives lost and $1,500,000 of property destroyed, almost sinks into insignificance beside it. The only recorded calamity of the kind which anywhere approaches it occurred in Estrecho de Rientes, in Spain, in April, 1802, when a dam burst and drowned 600 persons and swept $7,000,000 worth of property away.
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