Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/214

Rh down to the seashore to a depth of 30 or 40 feet; the shore being of rounded limestone pebbles, and singularly destitute of either animal or vegetable marine life. At the royal palace, or rather fortification at the opposite side (west) of the gulf, they had felt the shock, but it had produced as little alarm as here.

Itry lies about four miles northward, in the heart of the mountain mass, on the west side of the small stream. Aqua di Conca, that comes down south, to within a mile or so of Mola, passing beneath the spot where tradition says, Cicero died by the sword of the Centurion. Such of the people of this ignorant and wretched place, as I met with, seemed to know nothing of the earthquake. The road then rises rapidly over a low ridge, and a dreary descent of about nine miles further to the N.N.W., brought me to Fondi, which is at the base of the limestone, but at the head of another great basin plain, of deep marshy alluvium, not volcanic apparently, and resting on limestone beneath.

At Fondi I fell into conversation with the old Padre of the parish, who told me that there, most people had felt the shock, but not every one; he himself did: he was up and reading. He felt it as a sort of tremulous, forward and backward, gentle oscillation, most powerful at or near the end, but could not tell how long it lasted, or in what azimuth it moved; he was not conscious of any noise, nor had he heard of any such having been heard by others.

This old gentleman confidently attributed the small effects of the earthquake at Fondi, and its universal immunity from such calamities, to "the abundance of springs about it," that come from cavernous fissures, &c., in the limestone above and to the east of the town—a superstition, upon whatever based, that I found was popularly and widely