Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/459

Rh succession of oscillations, lasting several seconds, he could not say how many. The second distinct shock was about an hour after that; they had no means of telling the exact time of the occurrence. He heard the sound, he thought, about the same instant that he perceived the first movement. It was "a deep rolling murmur," and lasted as long as the movement. In these statements I found the Judice, and three or four of the better class of inhabitants who accompanied us coincided.

From the town and its neighbourhood I proceeded about a mile and a quarter to the magnificent monastery, the Certosa de St. Lorenzo. Where, then as well as on my return from the country further south and west, I was lodged with a graceful hospitality deserving of record. Within those quiet walls I remained two days for the purpose of writing up my journal from the pencil note-books, whose legibility was not to be trusted, having been written, for four or five days past, under almost continuous rain; and also to examine carefully the many instructive damages which the vast building had sustained. In both of these, I was inconvenienced by severe swelling and acute rheumatic inflammation of the backs of my hands, produced by their constant exposure to the wet, &c.

This noble old monastery (whose size and architectural grandeur rendered it worthy of lodging royalty, before it had been despoiled and defaced, in the French occupation under Murat) is built wholly of 'the best and hardest quality of the white limestone of the higher adjacent mountains, and founded altogether upon the deep clays and gravels of the piano. An eye-sketch plan, of that portion of the whole mass of buildings which I examined seismically, is given in Rh