Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/419

Rh The structure was not overloaded with material and was well put together, and the mortar still green. It did not exhibit a trace of injury. (See Fig. 196.)



As I pass southwards, still in the valley, and approach La Sala, the mountain peaks to the rear and above the first low range of the east flank, all show evidence of increased looseness and softness of the limestone rock; its bedding becomes more and more indefinite, its minute structure, more and more like a mass of fine angular compacted fragments, of a rather harder and originally more uniform liassic-looking rock, and its lithological character one of increasing chalky whiteness, with more and more silex intermixed, in the state of a very fine gritty white sand.

The forms of all the mountains behind, the rounded culmination of their summits, the curves of their flanks, with the flowing lines of the ravines, and swelling protuberances of the hill-sides, all alike indicate, a very soft and easily denuded or weathered rock; one of low elasticity and density, and capable of transmitting impulse, much less powerfully, and to a much less distance, than the limestone I had already encountered, and which with its maximum