Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/344

278 According to his narrative, the shock was from S. to N.; but when I caused him to point with his hand to what he deemed the north, he pointed nearly to the west, and I then found, what I afterwards recognized as the usual mode of speech in the provinces, that such words as "tramontana,—dal nordo,—meridionale,—mezzogiorno," were more commonly applied to the apparent path of the sun in the heavens, from rising to setting, than with precision as signifying points of the compass. I henceforward always made the narrator point out with his hand the azimuth he intended. The testimony of the Padre therefore, which coincides with that of the postmaster down at the bottom of the valley, agrees generally with the deductions from my observations.

Padre Mancini says, the first shock was "sussultorio," and immediately became "orizontale ed oscillatorio;" and he thinks the second, of an hour after, was "vorticoso." But upon being pressed as to what he meant, he at length said "he thought the direction was not the same as the first, and changed while yet shaking; but he was not certain," adding quaintly, that his own head and those of his parishioners had become "vorticosi" from the alarm of the first shock.

The accounts given here and at Auletta, of the sounds heard at the same time, or rather before the shock, agree in the main. At Auletta, those who were in the town and survive, commonly used such words as "fischio sospirante," and the like, in describing the sound. Those down at the Locanda generally said it was like the "romore di carozzo" simply. The Padre described it as "ronzio e romore moderato." And when asked more minutely to describe it, he said it was "ingens fremitus retonans cum sibilatione." My final impression was, that the description of the people