Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/496

400 of the east range of mountains of the Vallone di Diano, almost amounting to a local extinction of the ridge at Padula; as well as by its entire change of direction, and breaking up into numerous detached masses, after passing the low lying intervening gap.

The residual wave entering the new mountain system, has still had power to do great mischief. Casalnovo, Sanza, Casella, Podaria, Le Celle, Montano, Laurito, Policastro, Lagonegro, (where I learned at the Certosa facts proving that the wave-path was there north to south), Rivello, Bosco, Lauria, (where the wave-path was also north to south), Trecciena, Maratea, Tortora, Ajeta, and down to Casalito twenty-seven Italian miles south of where we stand, and innumerable other smaller places between, have been more or less shattered, though no lives have been lost south of Montesano.

The latter town is high and close above me, a little to the south, perched on the crest of a conical hill, well buttressed, and connected with the mountain ridge and shoulder on which it stands beetling to the north. As I pass, close and beneath it, I find from some people of the hamlet of Arena Bianca, (a little to the north), that a few houses and other buildings, and three churches, have been partly or wholly thrown down; and in the clear morning light, with the telescope of the theodolite, I can observe the fissures of many of the buildings, and, by the aid of the compass, approximate to the path of the wave, (though neither its direction nor emergence). I judged it to be from 150° to 165° E. of north. Near as Montesano seemed, I found it would lose $2 1⁄2$ hours to climb up to it.

The brilliant sunlit dawn, gradually got overcast; a