Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/41

14 minute inquiry valuable. The comparative scale of its injury may be gathered from the Photog. No. 272 (Coll. Roy. Soc), taken at near the centre of the town. I met here Mr. Major, an Englishman, who had been thus far into the earthquake regions with his staff, to distribute the British alms from Naples, and we rode some miles together, towards Tramutola to which I was bound, while he returned to Viggiano.

The Fiume Casale comes down here from the snowy summits far behind Viggiano, by a lateral ravine, and separates where it falls into the Agri, the argillaceous and sandy rocks, from the limestone, and, with the Agri, appears to be the separation from all the formations further west and south, in the limestone country. (See Geological Section, Spinosa to Viggiano, Fig. 2, Diagram No. 241.)

Passing along the Piano Mattine below Viggiano, and further northward, I found several most remarkable landslips, at the steep banks of the Agri; one of these is figured from eye-sketch in Diagram No. 274. It occurred at the salient boss, of a curve of the river, where the bed was about 400 feet, below the level of the surface of the piano. The surface of loamy clay land which had slipped, had been covered with coarse grass, now formed into many concentric curved fissures, and not less by the eye than 50 acres English had descended, and the topmost terrace of the slip, was about 50 feet below the level of the still standing land of the piano above it. The toe had protruded and greatly obstructed, the bed of the Agri, which was fast sweeping it away. It had ponded up at its fall the small stream, without a name, that came in from the east, and this had obviously recently made a debacle, of a