The first account sent to Naples of the two great slides or landslips above alluded to, which caused a great lake near Terranuova, was couched in these words:—"Two mountains on the opposite sides of a valley walked from their original position until they met in the middle of the plain, and there joining together, they intercepted the course of a river," &c. The expressions here used resemble singularly those applied to phenomena, probably very analogous, which are said to have occurred at Fez, during the great Lisbon earthquake, as also in Jamaica and Java at other periods.
Not far from Soriano, which was levelled to the ground by the great shock of February, a small valley, containing a beautiful olive-grove, called Fra Ramondo, underwent a most extraordinary revolution. Innumerable fissures first traversed the river-plain in all directions, and absorbed the water until the argillaceous substratum became soaked, so that a great part of it was reduced to a state of fluid paste. Strange alterations in the outline of the ground were the consequence, as the soil to a great depth was easily moulded into any form. In addition to this change, the ruins of the neighboring hills were precipitated into the hollow; and while many olives were uprooted, others remained growing on the fallen masses, and inclined at various angles (see [fig. 84]). The small river Caridi was entirely concealed for many days; and when at length it reappeared, it had shaped for itself an entirely new channel.
Buildings transported entire to great distances.—Near Seminara an extensive olive-ground and orchard were hurled to a distance of two hundred feet, into a valley sixty feet in depth. At the same time a deep chasm was riven in another part of the high platform from which the orchard had been detached, and the river immediately entered the fissure, leaving its former bed completely dry. A small inhabited house, standing on the mass of earth carried down into the valley, went along with it entire, and without injury to the inhabitants. The olive-trees, also, continued to grow on the land which had slid into the valley, and bore the same year an abundant crop of fruit.
Changes of the surface at Fra Ramondo, near Soriano, in Calabria.
1, Portion of a hill covered with olives thrown down.
2, New bed of the river Caridi.
3, Town of Soriano.
Two tracts of land on which a great part of the town of Polistena stood, consisting of some hundreds of houses, were detached into a contiguous ravine, and nearly across it, about half a mile from their original site; and what is most extraordinary, several of the inhabitants were dug out from the ruins alive and unhurt.
Two tenements, near Mileto, called the Macini and Vaticano, occupying an extent of ground about a mile long and half a mile broad, were carried for a mile down a valley. A thatched cottage, together with large olive and mulberry trees, most of which remained erect, were carried uninjured to this extraordinary distance. According to Hamilton, the surface removed had been long undermined by rivulets, which were afterwards in full view on the bare spot deserted by the tenements. The earthquake seems to have opened a passage in the adjoining argillaceous hills, which admitted water charged with loose soil into the subterranean channels of the rivulets immediately under the tenements, so that the foundations of the ground set in motion by the earthquake were loosened. Another example of subsidence, where the edifices were not destroyed, is mentioned by Grimaldi, as having taken place in the city of Catanzaro, the capital of the province of that name. The houses in the quarter called San Giuseppe subsided with the ground to various depths from two to four feet, but the buildings remained uninjured.