Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/198

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LAVIANO-PALAZZO CARMINE.
137

At the bed of the Rio Tempate, immediately below the town, barom. reads 29·00 inches, thermo. 43° Fahr., at 11·15, Naples mean time (26th February), and the reduced level is 1010·5 feet above the sea. At the mean level of the town on the top, at 10 a.m., barom. reads 28·26 inches, thermo. 41° Fahr., and the reduced level is 1627 feet above the sea. Laviano is, therefore, rather more than 600 feet above the bottom of the valley under it, and about 1000 feet below the ridge of the Bosco della Cerreta. The monastery of Cappucini, perched upon a rock that seems hard Apennine limestone to the telescope, stands 150 to 200 feet above the town. It is said to have suffered no injury.

The people of Laviano, as well as those of Calabrito, about six miles to the west, felt the shock with alarming distinctness; but no injury was done to the buildings generally, beyond some "piccolo lesione" in the walls, of which there are a good many visible. The churches, of which there are two or three, have suffered no injury.

I could find few of the fissured dwelling-houses, sufficiently distinctly fractured, or enough isolated, to obtain any results. From one of the largest, however, the palazzo of Signor Antonio Durso (filio) Don Carmine, now let in miserable tenements, I got pretty good indications. Both external and internal walls are fissured: the building is three lofty stories above ground. In the upper floor, which, as is common, opens upon a roofed but open-fronted terrace overlooking the street, the west-end wall has gone out. It and the "spaulng off" of the plaster from the wall and ceilings under the beams of the ceiling of the floor above indicate a movement from the south and east.

The fissures of the west quoin, which are open in the