Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/337

Rh faces towards Polla, or towards the S. and S.E., and the gentler slope towards Auletta, or N. and N.W. The steepest slope is about 55° from the vertical. The "colline" consists of solid beds of breccia of great thickness, of pebbles chiefly calcareous, but with many metamorphic hard slaty and chertose pebbles, of from 3 to 5 inches diameter, in a calcareous cement. Beneath the town these beds have a general E. and W. strike, or lengthwise to the river valley, and a dip of 30° the S. and S. E., so as to be not very far from parallel to the faces of the limestone mountain slopes, behind them to the N. and N.W.

The town was an extremely poor place, the land of the commune being less productive than that of Auletta, and chiefly the residence of working peasants. With the exception of a few new houses, low, and tolerably well built, with dressed quoin stones and jamb linings in long blocks, which have stood pretty well, though heavily fissured, all the remainder of the town was built of large oblate or ovoid calcareous boulders, of from 10 to 12 inches across, picked out of the banks and river bed below, and laid into the walls as in Figs. 143 and 144 (Coll. Roy. Soc.), without an attempt at dressing flat-beds upon them, and with thick mortar joints. The town has hence suffered fearfully and is almost completely demolished. The timbers of many of the houses after their overthrow took fire, and more than 150 corpses of the vast number buried in the ruins here, were found charred and calcined when disinterred, and in some few cases, all semblance of humanity, from the action of the quicklime produced from the calcined limestone, absolutely obliterated.

It was very painful to witness the subdued and patient