Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/71

36 I see considerable signs of damage: an old Castello on the summit is in ruins, and in several other places walls are down, and even at this distance, in the morning light, I can see some fissures, and several roofs fallen in. We are still on limestone of the average "fucoid" look; the hills high and precipitous, the loose material upon their slopes thin; a very thinly-peopled country, few houses, and few evidences of earthquake. As we pass the Landro and the bottom of the valley, I see that the section of the latter is like that of all the small valleys that I pass hereabouts, and as in sketch Fig. 291.

Limestone in ill-distinguished beds forms the upper hills, generally with east and west strike, and dipping slightly north or south; above it in the valley bottoms, a large depth of thin horizontal beds of indurated green and grey marls, and above that a bed of clays and limestone pebbles, and boulders with many included ones of harder extraneous rock, and in masses often of great thickness. The marl beds, once extended all across, and have been cut into by the rivers to great depths; but nowhere is the limestone visible at the bottom, the banks of clay constantly shedding in, over the eroding marl-beds, and leaving a skeleton of boulders, in the beds of the streams. A mile further on and Vietri de Potenza comes close in sight, a rather low-lying town, on the comparatively gentle,