Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/407

Rh sky, before and not long before, the shock. Many describe it at second hand, and these differ much in their statements as to time of its appearance, and give no intelligible account of its character; but many others say they saw it, and attempt to describe it as something like the light long after sunset, streaming up from the horizon at some one point, a sort of zodiacal light or phosphorescent diffused halo; whilst some point to one direction, some another, as its azimuth of apparition. Others—and amongst these were the gendarmes at Polla—say that the light seemed to them to emanate from the earth itself; and those that were in the dark gloomy lanes of the towns before the shock, say that some sort of luminosity lighted them upon their way.

Much, most of this, may be but the fancies of an imaginative and wonder-loving people; but in a country where commnnication is so bad, and news travels so slowly, it would be remarkable if so widely-diffused a notion, and one without any obvious popular basis of suggestion, should be devoid of all foundation in fact. I have therefore recorded it; and before dismissing the subject I may add, that I found the same story prevalent in the valley of Viggiano also, but lost all trace of it farther south, east, or north, while to the westward I heard the first of it at Auletta. It therefore has this remarkable attendant circumstance that, if fabulous, the fable was confined to an oval district around the most disturbed region. Conjectures would be useless as to its nature, but future observation directed to the point, may determine whether some sort of auroral light may emanate from the vast depths of rock formation, under the enormous tensions and compressions, that must