Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/153

102 The body of the monastery itself, is diffusely but not severely fissured. The best and most reliable fissures (as least affected by the rock behind) that I can find are in the north end gable, as seen from the terrace outside. (Sketch No. 328.) These three, with corresponding pairs in internal walls, give, I find, much about the same direction of wave-path with those of the church, viz., 33° E. of north, and the slope is nearly 40° for the two inner and 11° for the outer. I remark that the two former are nearly perpendicular to the face or slope, of the steep talus of bank beneath the monastery, and owe their extreme obliquity, as do those of the church, most probably to the reflected shove outwards from the rock behind; whose direction would, when coupled with the structure of the building, be in something like a line parallel to the slope of the bank. It is impossible to conceive them indicative, of a true angle of emergence of 40° here, in conflict with all other evidence.

The ancient fissures left by the shock of 1851 along the soffits of the corridors, which were 10° W. of north, and at right angles to that azimuth, prove that the wave-path then, could not have been very different from that of December last. The fissures in a few of the rooms on the second floor, to the front or west side, in which they are still visible, indicate the same. These cannot be confounded with the recent fissures, as those of 1851 have since been coloured over, in "tempera;" the recent ones are clean.

The monks, and especially the vicario, who has command (the priure having gone upon some mission), and who afforded me hospitality, agree in stating, their sensations to have been, that the shock came nearly horizontally, and