Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/388

304 These make angles with the vertical of 30° to 40°. They cross in both directions, but the larger and greater number, are inclined at top towards the north.

The fissures in the walls running east and west are all more nearly vertical, than those in north and south walls. They prove that the building rocked in all directions, but that the main force was one emergent from the north towards the south, at an angle with the horizon of between 50° and 60°. The violence of movement in this direction was great, where, for example, one fissure passed through a joint of the arch, composed of long, curved, ill-formed voussoirs, at $$s$$ (Fig. 178), over the front gateway, the arrises of the stones at the junction, are flushed off, as seen in enlarged Sketch (Fig. 178), and many such occur in the arches of the stone staircase, a square winding one, which, from its irregular form, is dislocated in every direction, as may be partly seen in Photog. No. 180 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) of the west interior façade.

The external wall $$e g$$ at the south end, $$\mathrm{B}$$ on block plan, was built on scarped ground below the floor level. It had been about 38 feet in height, and was but little restrained by cross walls, and these only at the ends, about 70 feet apart, and was built of bad rubble (as is much of the Palazzo, though with costly cut-stone dressings, &c.), in lumpy blocks, of 10 to 16 inches greatest length, the mortar joints thick and bad, and no thorough bond. This wall was 2 feet 4 inches thick, and about 8 feet in height from the top, $$e$$ to $$g$$ (Fig. 178), was thrown outward, so that the great mass of the debris lies, in a parallel heap upon the sloping ground between $$k$$ and $$t$$, from 10 to 18 feet from the foot of the wall, the average distance of