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Rh pass rapidly over the towns, which fell with a dreadful noise, and heard a deep subterranean report, which was more distinctly perceived in the many repetitions which followed the first agitation of the ground. In all those districts which suffered much injury, the shocks were first vertical and then undulating: the motion was communicated to a great distance, but with decreasing intensity, and simply undulating from north to south, about ten seconds in duration, as was observed in Naples. At the first convulsion of the buildings, men and women, old people and children, were buried under the ruins, some killed and some disabled by wounds, and not a few who had gained the street in which the walls of the adjacent houses were falling, perished in the act of escape. Some were safely sheltered under doorways where walls were left standing, whilst the roofs had fallen in. The survivors fled into the open air, and just as they were collected together, and were beginning to recover from their terror, and inquire for friends and relatives, half an hour after the first shock, another subterraneous report was heard, with new shocks, differing little in intensity from the first and causing fresh ruin to the buildings left insecure and tottering from the recent convulsions. The people beheld this scene of ruin in the open air: in Melfi, Barieli, and Rapolla they were left without a roof to shelter them, without food, clothes, or furniture. But if this repetition occasioned new damage, it did not create new victims, for all were already out of doors; and to some, perhaps, it may have been salvation, because, already buried under the ruins, they were partly disinterred by the new convulsion, and, safe or wounded, reappeared among the living; while others, doubtless, who had been buried alive, perished at that moment. Before evening there was a third shock, and during the night which followed the earth was convulsed about eleven times. In the succeeding days slight shocks occurred, once or twice during the day: afterwards they became less frequent, as was the case in September, when we visited these regions; and at the moment in which we are writing they are still perceptible, but occasion no injury to the buildings. At the first shock the inhabitants did not observe any sign attending the coming calamity, but afterwards they perceived that each shock was preceded by a mysterious foreboding among