Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/175

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THE STRANGE LIGHT AT MURO.

compelled me to make but a most cursory examination, so as to reach the Taberna della Aqua Bianca to sleep.

Descending on foot, the steep hills towards Muro, I fell into conversation with an extremely intelligent young man, whose name, I regret to find, I neglected to take, and who gave a good acoount of the earthquake, as observed about Bella, to which place he belonged. He alluded to the strange atmospheric light (before I had asked any question about it), which, he said, was noticed by nearly every one, like a pale diffused moonlight, for half an hour or more, before and after, the great shock. The first shock, he said, was a double one, with an intervening tremor. The noise was distinctly heard, and seemed to come, not only from the same direction as the shock, which, he said, most persons hereabouts agreed was from the S.W,, but also "out from under Monte Croce." On looking at the relative position of Monte Croce, from that of the house down towards the bottom of the valley, where he says he was on that night, I find the wave-path prolonged goes through the northern shoulder of Monte Pierno, and it may be concluded that the sound from beneath Monte Croce was, in fact, a subterraneous echo. It was long and reverberating, he said.

This lad was the first who noticed to me, the vast landslips that have occurred beyond Muro.

The rock hereabouts is cretaceous-looking limestone, in some places a coarse, irregular, limestone breccia; but the surface is covered with very deep clays, in and upon which, great limestone boulders are lying, all in directions that lean and slope towards the valley bottoms, and are indicative of the enormous amount of slippage of loose material, and of the denudation which has taken place.