Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/167

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EXACT TIME AT MELFI.

else except at Naples, so far as I have been able to collect. The Sotto Intendente carries a pocket chronometer, which, he states, goes with remarkable precision, and which he compares occasionally by telegraph with Naples time. He looked at this chronometer at the instant of the great shock, and found the time to be 10h 3m Naples mean solar time. Melfi is in longitude 1° 26' 40" E. of Naples, and the difference in time = 5m 46·6".

The Intendente did not hear any noise himself but states that very many persons in the city did. The people at the Agricultural College, and more particularly the teacher of natural philosophy there, described it as a low, prolonged, rumbling sound—"Sotterra ê in aria rimbombi quali produce il cannone lontano."

The Sotto Intendente said, that several persons in the city, spoke of having heard such sounds repeated several times during the night. They had observed nothing of unusual meteorological phenomena; the weather was calm and serene at the time of the shock. Their own sensations were, that the great shock had reached them from the S.W.; that it was nearly horizontal, and was succeeded by small up-and-down oscillations, that lasted for several seconds, the total duration, being very variously and obviously very vaguely estimated, at from twenty seconds to a minute or more.