Great Neapolitan Earthquake of 1857/Part II. Ch. XVI
CHAPTER XVI.
PADULA TO MOLITERNO, BY THE PASS OF ARENA BIANCA AND LAGOMAOURI.
I left my kind hosts of the Certosa at early dawn, on the 16th February, to pass still further south in the valley, and ascending over the pass of Oredone, or Arena Bianca, to reach Moliterno, in another valley to the south-east.
Approaching Sassano, a town on the west side of the valley, four miles from Certosa, I was enabled to see with the telescope that it had suffered but little, as was also the case with St. Giacomo, to the west of it. One building, partly ruined, and above the level of others, I could see distinctly, and by the fortuitous circumstance of the light from the sun reflected from its window-panes, whose azimuth I observed, was enabled to calculate approximately the axial line of building, and to infer the direction of the fractures and of the shock there. It turned out to be 137° E. of north. I cannot lay much stress on an observation so made. The muleteers, who knew the place well, said the people of it believed the great shock to have been from north to south, and that the same was the case with Buonabitacola, a small village at the same side, but further south. I passed near the latter, and the muleteers pointed out, where some large fissures had been produced in the earth near the road. I could not spare time to visit either, and commenced the ascent towards Ovedone, the mules creeping up, by stony traverses, along the N. E. side of the Fiume Imperatore, a torrent falling into the Calore, on its right bank. The section of the mountain range crossed, which separates the valley of the Calore, from that of the Moglia and Agri, and the general features of its geology, so far as I could observe them along my mule tracks, and thence on to and beyond Montemurro, are given in the section, Diagram, No. 241, Fig. 1.
After three hours' ascent, the form and features of the surrounding amphitheatre of mountains, by which the Vallone of Diano is shut in southward, became well displayed. To the south-west, stretching away above two miles, the Bosco della Cerzeta, is beneath me. The little town of Casalnovo, which is said to have suffered but little, is just visible beyond it, and high above, at some ten miles away, the gigantic Monte Cocuzzo, and further west Monte Rotundo, with Monte Cervaro due south, both of massive grandeur in outline, rise above innumerable lower peaks and hills, and shut in the view. I am 3,000 feet above the sea, but still these lofty summits subtend a considerable visual angle above my horizon. We are here upon the southern edge of the region, of actually ruined and overthrown towns, the meizoseismal, as reference to the Map, B, will show, all those further to the south being merely fissured, more or less severely. And from this elevation, it is easy to see and understand the physical features of the country, that have produced this sudden reduction of effect, by the prodigious loss of vis vivâ, that the wave of shock coming south must have sustained, by the abrupt lowering of the east range of mountains of the Vallone di Diano, almost amounting to a local extinction of the ridge at Padula; as well as by its entire change of direction, and breaking up into numerous detached masses, after passing the low lying intervening gap.
The residual wave entering the new mountain system, has still had power to do great mischief. Casalnovo, Sanza, Casella, Podaria, Le Celle, Montano, Laurito, Policastro, Lagonegro, (where I learned at the Certosa facts proving that the wave-path was there north to south), Rivello, Bosco, Lauria, (where the wave-path was also north to south), Trecciena, Maratea, Tortora, Ajeta, and down to Casalito twenty-seven Italian miles south of where we stand, and innumerable other smaller places between, have been more or less shattered, though no lives have been lost south of Montesano.
The latter town is high and close above me, a little to the south, perched on the crest of a conical hill, well buttressed, and connected with the mountain ridge and shoulder on which it stands beetling to the north. As I pass, close and beneath it, I find from some people of the hamlet of Arena Bianca, (a little to the north), that a few houses and other buildings, and three churches, have been partly or wholly thrown down; and in the clear morning light, with the telescope of the theodolite, I can observe the fissures of many of the buildings, and, by the aid of the compass, approximate to the path of the wave, (though neither its direction nor emergence). I judged it to be from 150° to 165° E. of north. Near as Montesano seemed, I found it would lose 212 hours to climb up to it.
The brilliant sunlit dawn, gradually got overcast; a strong wind from the N. W. sprang up, and the remainder of the day's journey, and that of three succeeding ones, was made under torrents of unceasing rain, which swelled the mountain streams, and the great rivers besides, and rendered their passage occasionally perilous to the laden mules.
At Arena Bianca, from which the pass over the shoulder south of Monte della Vajana takes its name, though called indifferently that of "Ovedone," two houses are down, and numberless breaches are visible, by lengths of the drystone fence walls which abound here, (like those in the limestone country of the west of Ireland,) having been prostrated; almost all the walls down ran east and west; a few, however, had run north and south, and afforded evidence, that while the main wave-path was still nearly north to south, there was here, also a minor transverse shake.