Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/73

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CHAPTER XXIX.

VIETRI DI POTENZA—EMERGENCE AND DIRECTION FIXED FOR THE PLACE.


It is Sunday, and I find Don Fortunate Gorrosi, the Judice, and several of the chief inhabitants lounging in the main street, and they conduct me over the place. There is a large and long fissure, 5 to 6 inches wide, and above 250 yards traceable in length, which cuts right across the military road, leading up to and close to the town; it is obviously due to a landslip of the deep clays upon their inclined limestone bed. Its general direction, though curved, is not far from north and south, and has obviously been determined, by the contour of the spot and of the rock beneath.

Almost close to the entrance to the town, at the east side of the street, stands a small and new, square monumental structure, intended for a water conduit, and to commemorate the completion of a new road: it is built of well-chiselled blocks of white limestone. See Photogs. Nos. 293 and 294, (Coll. Roy. Soc.,) and Fig. 295, Diagram No. 1. Its axial line, i.e., the plane of its front and rear faces, runs 137° 30' W. of north. It is greatly shaken and dislocated, but not thrown down. The lower part of the structure was built up solid, to the level of (Fig. 1.); above this it was hollow, and consisted of the parallelopipeds of limestone, laid