mud when wet. Here and there, huge limestone boulders, and others, of metamorphic rock, are scattered through its mass, and have been moved pari passu downwards with it, towards the bottom of the valley; and as far as the eye can stretch westward, along the lower slopes of Monte Carozze, Guardiola, and Croce del Topo, and towards the valley in which Castel Grandine lies, the whole country seems composed, of like masses of clays, bearing like enormous detached masses of rock, all, from their slopes and positions, in process of slowly and insensibly going downwards, into the beds of the torrents and rivers, in the valley bottoms.
At daylight, I descended the steep slopes to the S.W. of the Taberna, to examine Muro, and the grand chasm through which the Giacojio rolls, upon the opposite side of which Muro is poised, upon the shelves of the spur, looking S.E. between that stream and the Malda, that falls in just below it. At the Taberna, at six a.m., Naples mean time, barometer reads 27·65 inches, thermo. 34° Fahr., and the reduced level gives 2178 feet above the sea. The older part of Muro, stands terraced, about 300 feet above the bed of the torrent, and is about on a level with Bella. The newer portion, stands about 150 feet higher, and is apparently about 200 feet below the Taberna, so that the level of the torrent bed, beneath Muro, may be about 1500 feet above the sea.
The town stands upon solid masses of limestone, on beds almost perfectly vertical, that rise like a wall; upon the south and east sides of the grand chasm of dislocation, that here is rent for above two miles in length, in a general S.E. and N.W. direction, through the limestone rock. (See Diagram No. 337, Figs. 1, 2, and 3.) For above
