Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/532

426 joinery, as well as the metallic parts of houses, &c.; under what changed conditions as to geological position may these, if ever, see the light again!

In this vitalizing climate, but a few years will elapse, before the frosts of winter and its torrential rains, will have pulverized and reduced to interstitial soil, much of the dry rubbish: plants and seedlings will root in it; forest-trees will send their searching roots downwards through it, and beneath their fostering shade, a jungle of shrubs, weeds, mosses, and coarse grass, will spring up and conceal with verdure the harsh colouring and form, of the heaps that once were a city; and after but a few generations the fearful fate of its two thousand overwhelmed inhabitants—nay, its very site, will have become a tradition as dim, as that of the neighbouring Grumentum.

About half a mile S.E. of Saponara, upon the level clays of the piano, I passed two square gate-piers of rubble ashlar masonry, leading to an orchard, 3 feet square, and 7 feet in height, both prostrated, and in directions accurately parallel, 140° 30′ E. of north, fractured at the ground level from their foundations. The mortar was bad, and by examination with the hand I judged had not an adhesion



of more than about 2 lbs. per square inch. The wave-path was exactly subnormal to the piers (Fig. 257).