Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/89

52 the southern Apennines rise peaked up, and shaggy with dark pine forests, their summits diademed with snow. Muro bears 29° W. of north, and Picerno 13° W. of north, Barragiano being between them. Commencing the descent which, in order to reach Tito, we have to make again nearly to the bottom of the valley below it, I see a large building below me at about a quarter of a mile distance, the huge north and south fissures in which, show the wave-path hereabouts, almost exactly west to east.

Tito was a highly interesting and ancient town of about 5000 inhabitants, before the earthquake, and would have well repaid a longer examination than I was enabled to bestow upon it. It was very roughly handled, and had nearly 260 people killed. It stands upon a lofty eminence, like almost every other, and is 400 or 450 feet above the Fiumara di Tito, that rolls its little torrent close beneath it, in the bottom of the gorge, to the west and south. It stands upon rock, with more or less diluvial covering, and occupies the S. W. slope of the hill; thus presenting a free outlying surface to a wave-path here approaching S.W. to N.E.

Numbers of its houses are down, and the fractures of the walls all give evidence of a steep emergence about 30° (Photog. No. 299, Coll. Roy. Soc). A most quaint-looking little old church, St. Antonio, on the very top of the hills above the town, which may be seen in the distance in Photog. No. 299, gave from fractured wedges at the quoins, about the same emergence, and a wave-path 74° 30' E. of north. The wave-path from the several houses examined, gave a mean value of 87° 30' E. of north; but this is probably incorrect, as I had not time to make