Page:Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857.djvu/298

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been validated.
224
LIMESTONE BRECCIA.

Ajossa, and during the evening spent with him I obtained a great deal of useful local and other information, as to matters of fact from him.

He gave me circumstances I deemed conclusive, that the wave-path had been from N. to S. at Lago Negro and at Sapri, and at Laurino from the S. W. to N. E. I fell in again with Signor Palmieri near Polla, whence he was returning, and was indebted to him for first calling my attention to the instructive facts developed at the Palazzo Palmieri there, which he had just been examining.

About four miles from Eboli I crossed the Salaris by a grand old irregular bridge of one very large semicircular arch and several minor ones, and here first observed masses of the limestone pebble breccia, of the Apennine formation (the bridge is built of it), which, from this eastward, appears to overlie the limestone and underlie the deep diluvial clays and gravels of the valley bottom. The pebbles hereabouts are usually from two to four inches diameter, much water-worn and rounded, of a brown-grey and fawn-coloured argillo-calcareous rock, with a good many occasional pebbles of a tea-green, cherty, metamorphic slate, so hard as almost to resemble Jade. The cementing material is calcareous, and the interstices of the pebbles are filled with fine gravel and calcareous sand. It is a coarse but good building stone, and indurates much on exposure. In situ, this breccia here is stratified in great coarsely-defined and irregular beds, which generally approach the level in strike, though much tilted transversely to the line of valley.

At the fork of a small stream, the Merdarolo (or Pagliardo according to some of the peasants), where it joins the Salaris on the left bank, beds of limestone tilted