Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/436



, a large town, said to be of Lucanian origin, but with no traces of extreme antiquity, and generally well built, stands upon a pretty steep eminence of solid limestone, at the southern extremity of the first great break in the lateral chain to the east of the Vallone. The range rises high above to the N. N. E.; and eastward of the same there is a narrow lateral valley in a direction about N. E., and exactly at the tongue, between it and the great Vallone stands Padula. The Vallone here narrows very rapidly, and trends off to the westward at about a mile or two south; and still further south at Buona Bitacola on the west, and Montesano on the east, it becomes quite hemmed in by lofty mountains. Violent contrary motions must therefore have been produced by the breaking up of the great wave of shock in the deep alluvium, and its in-baying and shelving up upon the irregular masses of limestone mountains that divide the many divergent valleys, and gorges, and project between them. Directly south of Padula, and of the great Cistercian Monastery of St. Lorenzo, about a mile west of the town, the clays of the piano give place to a rolling and broken surface of clay and gravel, overlying