Monte Matese, to the southward of the chain, they said they understood the shock had been felt very sharply, much more so than with them, which is what might be expected. It had been felt in Molise, to beyond Campobasso.
Whatever wave impulse may have been transmitted, from Naples and the south side of the bay, northwards and diverging east and west, into the great plain of the Terra di Lavoro, was in condition to become very rapidly extinguished. The great plain itself consists, of a vast heterogeneous deposit of level and loose volcanic materials, chiefly tufa, yellow and brown, and becoming dark grey and very ancient, at the north and west sides, with great beds of lapilli, and covering over in many places, travertino, and lava streams or outbursts, several of which may be seen cut through, in roads or opened for quarries. These deposits, surrounded to the N.E. and south by steep limestone hills, branches of which penetrate into the plain in various directions, lap against their bases, and wind in and out amongst their hollows, like an earthy sea, always abutting close upon the roots of the hills, but never rising upon their slopes, but like an irregular stone trough filled in level with dry sand. And the earth wave appears here to have been transmitted from the limestone range to the south of Naples Bay, through the deep bottom of the trough, and shaken the limestone edges of it to the north and east, very perceptibly more, than the loose dry filling within it, or anything that rested thereon.
Thus I found, in going northward at Sesse, which stands upon part of the great limestone spur, that comes down in a S.W. direction nearly to the coast at Mondragone, and terminates with Monte Massico, that all these towns and hamlets had been (so far as I could judge by the description
