brow, of an extensive table-land, sloping up to lofty mountain-masses extending for more than 16 miles to the north and N.W. From the high lands above the town, I could see three great river-beds—the Agri, the Moglia, and the Racanello that sweeps past Castel Saraceno, and which fall into the Agri much lower down; and looking N.E., the upper forks of the Sauro were visible, all running in deep beds, through a clay country, lofty and rolling in surface.
The mass of the plateau of Montemurro, seems at first to be nothing but clay; but upon the highest points of the town, and a little beyond it to the north and N.E., the soft, crumbly, yellow, calcareous sandstone, a half-compacted rock, comes bare up to the surface, and obviously forms a great cone, upon and around which, the immense clay deposits are heaped up.
The beds, here thick and ill-defined, run in strike nearly east and west, and dip rapidly to the south at 50°. They show themselves here and there, intercalated with some harder argillaceous shaly rock. (See Geological Section, Diagram No. 241.)
At Giuseppe's "cabane," which is nearly on the same level as the base of the great tower of the Chiese Madre, and the Franciscan Monastery (Photog. Nos. 263 and 267, Coll. Roy. Soc.), and about the mean level of the plateau of the town, the barometer stood (18th of February), at 9.30 A.M., Naples time, at 27.16 inches, thermo., 54°. The elevation above the sea is therefore 2695.8 feet, and about 2000 feet above the bed of the Agri, opposite, the whole of which fall, the torrent of the Laderana has within four or five miles. Its effects upon the clay banks may thence be understood.
