Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/390

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THE FLOORS.

in one of the large reception rooms of the first floor, are shown in Fig. 181.

In the great drawing-room, the diagonal fissures in the north and south walls are 2, 21/2, and 3 inches wide at the ceiling level, in about 16 feet in height. And the brown planks of the naked floor above, (naked here, because all the ceiling has come down, and left the oak and chestnut bare) have drawn from the north wall, which has gone out, and the floor and south wall have gone together in the opposite direction, the total movement at the floor level being 41/2 inches, and almost exactly parallel to the line of the east and west walls. In another room, of 16 feet in length of end wall, the planking has drawn from the north end wall, 4 inches at the east, and but 2 inches at the west corner,

indicating a wave-path north and south, with some degrees trend to the east of north. The east and west walls being heavily fissured, the south wall had gone out in the direction parallel to (Fig. 182).

The Palazzo though thus shattered, and in many places dangerous to approach, had yet several articles of heavy furniture, &c., remaining untouched and unremoved; and through the politeness of one of the Palmieri family,