against the sky like the gaunt arms of despair.[1] Such an horizon high above me, and close around, on all sides the cold and dripping huts, thrown together, of whatever ruin had first presented to the hand, and filled with wounded and perishing beings, depressed the spirits of even the passing observer, to an extent that made me readily comprehend, the dull and stupefied patience, with which the survivors still cowered round the ruin of their homes.
There was less of the town upon the north, than upon the south slope of the hill; and as the blow came from the N. W., the “free lying stratum” was at the south and S. E. side, so that the condition for destruction, and the extent of food for it, were both here the greatest possible.
The only portion in which walls were standing at all, and still showing something of the features of a town, though shattered and in great part roofless, was at the east side, a long way down from the summit, as seen in part in Photog. No. 251, and in Photog. No. 254 (Col. Roy. Soc.), from the east side, looking back westward and northward.
No more complete proof could have been afforded of the fact, that the utter destruction of the town was due to the swaying of the hill itself upon which it stood, and not to some great increase at this region, of the dimensions or velocity of the earth-wave itself, than the finding several buildings around the base of the hill, and upon the deep alluvium close to its junction with the limestone of which it is composed, comparatively safe—all, however, severely shattered. Of these an example occurs in a house of two stories, seen to the left and low down in Photog No. 253.
- ↑ These timbers had been removed for huts and fuel between the time of my visit and that of taking the photographs, February to May, 1857.
