Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/178

Rh Muro is before me (Photog. No. 334), at the opposite side of the deep narrow valley, clinging to the precipitous N.E. end, of a huge mass of solid limestone mountain, that comes up in the midst of a great amphitheatre of far larger and higher mountains, amongst which Monte Croce towers above all.

All the bedding discernible about Muro, seems nearly vertical, and the rocky sides of its mountain base, are murally steep. It is not more than a mile distant in a right line, and yet I find, it will take two hours and a half at a trot, to reach the town from this. I therefore remain at the Taberna dell' Aqua, or della Muro, and pass the evening with the padrone, and his family of three sons and four daughters, all grown up, chatting over the earthquake around the "Camine."

On the road side approaching Muro from the north, is a remarkable example of the movements by slippage of the

vast masses of unctuous clays, of this region, into which the thin marl beds dissolve when saturated in water.

The Photog. No. 335 (Coll. Roy. Soc.) and Sketch