Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857 Vol 2.djvu/196

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GRAND SCENERY.
135

eastward, where the white limestone again appears. We pass through a beautiful little gorge, flanked by precipices of this last rock, with the charming little nameless stream below us, and I remark that this gorge also has a N.E. and S.W. general direction. We continue to descend rapidly for a long way, towards Laviano, and within a mile of the town, to the east of it, I find specimens of the white, cretaceous-looking limestone, with chloritic slate and ferruginous bands enclosed in it. All is again limestone now around me, and it bears, lithologically, an uncommonly "green sand" like character.

Nothing that I had hitherto seen in the Southern Apennines equalled the savage grandeur, and, in many places, the great natural beauty of the scenery I have passed through between Monte Croce and Laviano, a region capable of well rewarding the prolonged visit, of either geologist or artist.