Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/438

352 and rivers round the town to the east and south, and passing the Certosa de S. Lorenzo farther into the Calore. This torrent issues principally from copious springs in the rock and coming from under the clays, about a mile and a half up the gorge to the north; and these are now, and have been ever since the earthquake, highly turbid and discoloured by the reddish earth, and are said by the Syndic and Subjudice of Padula, who visited the place with me, to be largely increased in volume of water, since that event.

The Photog. No. 210, is taken in this valley, looking back at the town toward the S. W. On the steep counterscarp to the right of this view I found a large fissure in the solid clay covering, extending some 300 yards in length at about 270 feet above the bottom of the gorge. The direction was due E. and W. by compass, and its S. slip was from 1 to 7 inches below the level of the opposite one. The fissure is a flowing curve similar in horizontal plan to the contour of the hill side, and its line of direction is just that most favourable, to a throw off and slip of the clay masses, upon the sublying rock, by the jog of the earthquake, which is unquestionably the nature of its formation. Upon the opposite side, and about half a mile up the valley to the north, where the east slope has become much steeper, I observe with the telescope that huge masses of clay and gravel that had stood above the torrent as nearly vertical hanks, of from 50 to 120 feet in height over the water, have in several places been shaken down, and fallen in great masses, damming the torrent into large and very deep, discoloured pools, from some of which the dams have already given way by little debacles, while in several of the others, the water is escaping beneath and through the clay, and carrying volumes of fluid mud and sand away