THE DEATH-RATE OF EARTHQUAKES 245 



thorough bonding whatever." The floors are heavy and the 

 roofs, which are hardly less massive, are covered with large 

 tiles secured, except at the ridges, by their own weight 

 alone. 



Houses of this description were ill adapted to withstand 

 the rough shock of the Neapolitan earthquake of 1857. At 

 Saponara, where the death-rate amounted to 50 per cent., the 

 buildings, when shaken down, fell against and upon those 

 beneath them and thus increased the common ruin. When 

 Mallet, who investigated the earthquake with such skill, 

 reached the place, " the summit and far down the slope all 

 round presented nothing but a rounded knoll — shadowless and 

 pale — of chalky stone and rubbish, without line or trace of street 

 remaining ; it might have seemed an abandoned stone quarry or 

 the rubbish of a chalk pit, save that its rounded and monotonous 

 outline was broken here and there by beams and blackened 

 timbers that, rooted in the rubbish, stood thrown up in wild 

 confusion against the sky-line like the gaunt arms of despair." 



Though no doubt more firmly built, the houses of Messina 

 suffered greatly from their heavy stone floors and staircases. 

 " In some cases," writes a visitor to the city soon after the 

 earthquake, " the whole centre of the house had fallen leaving 

 the empty case of the outer walls enclosing a heap of broken 

 rubbish. In others and these are more numerous, the main 

 walls fell outwards, leaving the core of the house exposed like 

 an open doll's house, with the floors intact. . . . But in most 

 cases the house had fallen entirely, leaving a shapeless mound." 

 Thus, almost universally, the floors and roof seem to have parted 

 from the walls, owing to the weight of the former and the 

 slightness of their connection with the walls. The streets were 

 so narrow, the greatest width not exceeding twelve yards, that 

 they were in many cases completely blocked by fallen masonry, 

 which rose to an average height of more than five yards ; so 

 that, even if people could have escaped from their houses, it 

 would only have been to die in the streets. In the Riviera, 

 again, the houses in some of the coast-towns are built of rounded 

 stones collected from the beach, bound by the poorest kind of 

 cement ; they are lofty in proportion to the foundation and 

 thickness of the walls and arches in the walls are common even 

 in the upper storeys and often abut against the walls without 

 any lateral support. In the private houses injured by the 



