Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/368

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.

CHAPTER IX.

THE OBSERVATIONS AT POLLA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.




Upon the south and north slopes of the town, I clambered over heaps of stone and rubbish, and amongst entangled beams, ten, fifteen, and even twenty feet in depth, above the former surface of the place. Upon the eastern slope the ruin had been less; but over the larger portion of the city upon the hill, the destruction had gone so far, that objects suitable for the determination of the precise direction of the shock no longer existed. Viewed with a comprehensive glance, it was obvious that the shock had been in a direction not far from north and south, and had been very steeply emergent. The Photogs. Nos. 162 and 163 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) convey some faint idea of the general appearance of the more completely overthrown portions of the city; and those Nos. 164 and 165 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) of the character of the ruins seen from the midst of them. No. 164 is a street of the more level part to the east of the city; No. 166 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) is amongst the heaps that overwhelmed the site where the church Santa Trinita had stood; and No. 165 looks upwards over a quarter of a mile of ruin, towards that of the Castello that