Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/342

276 The direction of wave-path given by all this portion of the ruined town, was from E. to W. 118° to 120° 30' W. of N. The force in the N. and S. direction, therefore, which brought the wall a against b was necessarily small. In some other portions of this west side, the crooked streets brought the general position of the houses to be ordinal, nearly 40° W. on the average. The houses that were so circumstanced, were less absolutely demolished than those whose front and rear walls ran nearly cardinal or N. and S., but diagonal and crossing fissures were to be found in all directions, and huge wedge-shaped masses, as in sketch Fig. 144 were thrown out from the W. and S. W. quoins of numbers of them. From the extent to which destruction had proceeded, and the vile class of the masonry, measurements of the widths of fissures, were uncertain and the angles of fracture ill defined. From measurements and general judgment together, however, it appeared to me that the angle of emergence here must have been extremely steep, steeper than the indications at the Villa Carusso, and certainly not less than 70° with the horizon, possibly as much as 75°.

This is corroborated by the nearly universal fall of the tiled roofs and heavier floors.

In the Photogs. Nos. 149 and 150, some of the steeply-inclined fracturing is visible: some of the temporary roofs, as well as the piling up of the stones seen in No. 150, had been work done since the shock, in digging out for interment, the buried corpses.

At the east side of the town, the wave-path was more nearly E. and W., and gave a general direction of 83° 30' or 84° W. of N.