Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/90

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CHIESA MADRE AND CROSS OF TITO.
53

measurements, and had to trust to eye alone, and many of the houses were highly ordinal, preventing very correct guessing. The Chiesa Madre, seen from the interior of the nave, Photog. No. 297 (Coll. Roy. Soc), and externally, looking in the same direction, Photog. No. 298 (Coll. Roy. Soc.), has lost the whole of its roof, which has fallen into the body of the church, much of the rubbish being thrown towards the west side.

The west end wall, gave evidence by its fissures, and by the descent of the mass above the doorway, of the steep emergence, which gave the angle = 33°, and this was sustained by the wedge-shaped pieces thrown from the quoins externally. The wave-path deduced from its fissures was 59° 30' E. of north. I find I omitted to record the direction of the axial line.

Here, surrounded by a number of miserable huts, run up for temporary shelter from the ruins of the houses, was one of the little stone crosses, a Roman Doric column, on stepped base, with ball and cross on top (Photog. No. 300, Coll. Roy. Soc.), which, contrary to the usual fact, had been overthrown, and apparently broken right through the shaft, at about one-third of its length above the base.

The structure had not been socketed as in most cases, but united by iron dowals, which appeared to have split the stone by rusting, so that it easily separated, and the parting of the shaft, appeared to be at an old fracture. The stone was also bad and shattery. It did not appear to warrant any conclusion as to unusual velocity of the wave here. Yet Tito has suffered vastly more than Picerno, though not six miles from it, and both at nearly equal distances from a point, which must be somewhere about