Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/341

Rh a certain range nearly cardinal. The walls a and b, and all parallel to them, run nearly E. and W. These were in great part, more or less standing, but fissured, in sloping cracks; but the walls whose plans had been N. and S.



were universally down and in rubbish, unless something had accidentally propped them up. In the sketch No. 152, the gable wall a, had been built within about 2½ feet S. of b, a passage had probably run between them; b was kept up by flooring and other props to the northward, but a had swayed over at top to the northward, and leaned against b there, the bottom of both being buried in rubbish wherever the fracture had occurred.

The horizontal force and velocity with which a had been brought over against b, was small, as they only touched, at the top, and the space below was all hollow between, and yet a was not fractured by the coming in contact: it was about 2 ft. 3 in. thick and about 15 feet high above the rubbish. The sockets of the joists, whence they had been drawn and twisted out, were still visible on its face.