Earthquakes in Sicily. 235 
was proved by all the phenomena mentioned in the beginning 
wil] not be guided by the injuries suffered i in different pat 
for these spring froma complication of causes ; from th soil, 
its greater or less capacity of Pen and com. aaa 
motion; from the manner in which it presents itself to the 
progressive motion, and from the — of the edifices. These 
circumstances may sometimes produce anomalies which easily 
deceive those who do not bestow in the examination of them 
the attention which they deserve ; but without fear of error 
1 may say, that in general the shock was much the most for: 
cible on the northern shore, and at a little distance from it 
and that it went on grecealy = TSS HOE towards the interi- 
or. The moving force, then, must have been in operation 
somewhere under the sea at a part of the Island. 
aso was almost entirely ruined; Patti, and all the towns 
sbaat Capes Orlando and Calava, “a which are nearer Eolia 
were epuarieraby dama.ed. Some very small, thinly in- 
babited towns lost little, because they had little to loses. 
were insoine measure defended by their situations. Palermo, 
at the bottom of a bay which curves towards these hifnin 
islands, and surrounded by large and high pauikaite on the 
other side, was exposed to the whole force of the motion 
against it; this it was, together with the degraded state of its 
buildings, which brought such ruin upon this beautiful city. 
Every thing seemed then to announce to us, that the most ex- 
pansive vapours which proceed from the burning aa of 
Folia, in developing their immense volumes, urged against 
the sides of those cavities which once contained the matter 
of which all these islands are formed, produced the motion 
that struck obliquely against Sicily, and moving along the 
shore towards the west, spread despair throughout Palermo. 
After the shock of the fifth, their motion was more free; and 
they were heard murmuring under the soil near our island, 
seeking an outlet from the obscure caverns in which they 
were generated, but not propagating their motion to any con- 
siderable distance. The course of that of the seventh was 
in the same direction with that of the fifth ; but that of the thir- 
eb was in a direction directly o posite, since it was felt 
ssina, and not at Palermo he undulations were de- 
tormioel by the tig aig: 5 a of the motion ; the per- 
pendicular shocks, by a force acting from below upwards, 
which supposes a much sia depth i in the situation of the 
acting foree, than the other, without ever being in any case 
