Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/458

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CHAPTER XI.

PADULA AND ITS NEIGHBOURHOOD.




Below the town, and nearly upon the level of the piano, and founded upon the deep clays, stands the monastery of St. Francisco. Its greatest length stood transverse to the general wave-path, and it has suffered much. Its walls present fractures complicated by the double shock; but those whose planes approached a north and south direction, gave good measures of angle of emergence, which appeared a good deal less, down on the deep clays, than up on the rocky eminence of the town.

The average of the measurements taken from fissures and fractures, some of which were in the portions of the monastery seen in Photogs. No. 223 and No. 224 (Coll. Roy. Soc.), gave an emergence of 18° to 20° from the north, or 5 1/2° to 7 1/2° less in the clays than in the limestone rock.

The Syndic of Padula, who accompanied me over the whole place, was of opinion that the great shock came from the northward, but that it was also "vorticoso," or at least in various directions transverse to the main one, and so close together in time, that it was impossible to regard the earthquake (here) as other than a prolonged and irregular