Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/87

50 narrow valley, like that of the Landro, for five or six miles. The Marmo then turns westward, and falls into the Platano, which, passing between Reciliano and Balvano—both towns that have suffered severely—is joined by the Landro at Vietri, and both then become, II Fiume Bianco, the head waters of the Tanagro and Salaris. The country all about here is very thinly inhabited, and the land appears very poor: we have scarcely passed a house between Vietri and Picerno. Crossing the Marmo, half a mile brings us to Picerno. The town is full 500 feet above the river at the bottom of the valley: it stands upon a rounded mass of diluvium, clays, and gravels of great depth, with argillaceous slates beneath. It is nearly insulated on three sides by erosive gullies of enormous depth, cut though the clays, which seem once to have filled all the valleys in this part of the country, to a depth of 400 feet or more above the levels of the existing water-courses. Off to the S.W., I can see with the telescope from the precincts of the town, some crevasses, produced by prodigious slips of these diluvial clays (of a purplish-red colour), upon the steep sides of the gullies, for those, though large enough, can scarcely be called valleys, whose sides are as steep as 40° to 50°, and nought but banks of clay and boulders, without a blade of vegetation. The town is about the same size and style as Vietri: it has suffered most upon the north and west sides, which consisted of the poorest and worst buildings.

Part of the west wall of the church is down, as also part of the north one, which has fallen upon the roof of a side aisle and crushed it: it gives a wave-path 45° E. of north from fractures. The Campanile of chiselled limestone, with brick at the base, five lofty stories in height, and of the usual