Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/445

Rh bases, and the almost universal occurrence of fissures in all four walls of rectangular buildings, whether cardinal or ordinal.

At the very top of the town, founded upon the bare limestone rock, which here protrudes to the surface everywhere, I observed an old and partly ruinous mansion, the Palazzo Romani, which, as well as its deserted gardens, afforded me some valuable data.

The palazzo is a large, nearly square, three-story building, very nearly cardinal. The walls are well built of rubble. It stands on level ground. It is fissured in all four external walls: all the fissures are long and threadlike, and are scarcely visible in the Photogs. No. 213 and No. 214 (Coll. Roy. Soc.), the former showing the S.W. quoin, the latter the opposite, or N.E. one. From previous indications of double shock here, I dare not conclude anything as to horizontal component of wave-path, from the fissures in adjacent walls; but those in the flank walls gave excellent evidence as to angle of emergence, which proved to be 25° to 25° 30' from north. The fissures in the adjacent walls were much more nearly vertical (8° to 10° inclination), and hence appeared to have been produced by the secondary shock, which shook the whole colline of the town to its base, and therefore by an oscillation more nearly in an horizontal path. I could only gain access to part of the interior; it was empty and disused, and offered little to record, probably.

In front, and to the N.W. of the palazzo, is a little columnar monument—Il Croce Romani, of the ordinary character; a Roman Doric column of 9 inches diameter of shaft and 9 feet high, supporting a white marble ball and