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182 Potenza. The 'Giornale' describes similar, or perhaps louder noises occurring in Principato Citeriore, and they are still audible in the most injured places of Basilicata. Some of those who left their houses at the first shock, saw at the second convulsion, over the wood of Ariosa, a mountain near Vignola, visible from Potenza, from which it is but a few miles distant, a beam of fire which disappeared in a moment. This meteor was seen, not only by the inhabitants of Potenza, but also by those of Vignola. In Potenza, some persons who were in the open space before the residence of the Intendente, observed a sudden darkness, followed by vivid flashes of lightning, springing from the ground, and darting through the air, and others saw the palace itself and other houses rise and fall with the ground, like reeds shaken by the wind, and the walls in the alleys knocked against each other. I need not mention the falls and staggering of the people. Another fact, which is apparently of greater importance, is that mentioned by the Syndic of Salandra, that for a month before, a gaseous exhalation, about sun heat, was observed to rise every morning from a cavity or aperture excavated for a watercourse, and that a similar exhalation was seen in the neighbourhood, both of which disappeared on the 22nd December. But this isolated fact may be ascribed to phosphoretted hydrogen gas, as in the burning quiescent fountains (fontane ardenti e tranquille) described by naturalists, and we are consequently of opinion, that it had no connection with the earthquake; but we must add that the Chancellor of the Commune assured us, that the exhalation was warm, having applied his hand to it, and that he considered it true smoke, as the side of the drain from which it issued with an earthy smell, was dried up and almost blackened. He added that the soil was cretaceous. The Syndic of Bella relates that half an hour before the earthquake, a suffocating smell of sulphur was perceptible, accompanied by a loud subterraneous noise; and that at the moment of the shock they who were living in cellars, perceived, besides the smell, a light sufficient to show the movements of the people in the room. The royal Judge also affirms, that a similar smell was perceptible, before some of the slight shocks, especially before that which occurred on the 19th January at dawn. The Syndic also speaks of large and deep fissures, from ten to thirty span, in a perimeter