50 REPORT—1850. 
Again, these landslips often took place from both sides of a straight valley 
at the same moment, or from two projecting headlands at opposite sides, one 
higher up the valley than the other (when in the latter case the shock passed 
the valley, not directly across, but diagonally), and then the vast debris 
meeting in the bottom of the ravine, by the mutual reaction of one side 
against the other, forced up a huge mass in the middle, often to half the height 
nearly of the table-land at each side, z.e, to 250 feet above the bottom of the 
valley, and thus a so-called hill or mountain was formed in the valley. Thus, 
near Terra Nuova, when the whole town of Mollochi di Sotto was detached 
with many vineyards, and descended into the ravine on whose bank it before 
stood, “some water-mills that were on the river having been jammed between 
two such masses as these were lifted up by them in the middle of the valley, 
and are now seen on an elevated situation many feet above the level of the 
river.” (Hamilton, Calabrian Earthquake, Phil. Trans., vol. Ixxii.) And in the 
plains also wonderful effects of the propagation of pressure to vast distances 
by superincumbent weight are recorded by Hamilton, Spallanzani and Dolo- 
mieu. Thus, says the latter, “In the deep valleys of the rivers Tricucio, Birbo 
and Boscanio, sand and clay ran like lava, or asif carried away by water; in 
other places considerable portions of mountains ran for several miles in their 
way to the valleys, without falling to pieces or even changing their shape.” — 
Hamilton says that the loose underlying sand formation, when wetted by the 
damming up of the rivers, &c., became a sort of fluid rollers, upon which the _ 
most enormous masses were moved; in one place, two portions of land,each 
about a mile long by half as much wide, with all their cultivation, were thus — 
moved bodily down a valley, a distance of more than a mile; and a mountain 
mass of sand and clay was moved (or at least was affirmed to have been 
moved) nearly four miles. 
2nd. New lakes and river-courses are formed, and old ones 
obliterated. 
In many places the valleys dammed across by these landslips arrested the 
course of the rivers passing through them, and formed lakes of great size and 
profound depth. In some places these dams were so stanch from their 
clayey material, that the lakes, brimful, overflowed the table-land at the sides — 
of the valley, and traced out new river-courses on the plain, which again 
fell into the old course further down, the new course rapidly eroding the soft — 
alluvial plain, and preparing to form in course of time a new ravine as deep 
as that that had been dammed so suddenly. These lakes became putrid from — 
the masses of vegetable and animal matter brought into them, and had to 
be drained at once by public measures to avoid pestilence. But in many cases 
the dams, unable to resist the pressure of the rising waters above them, burst — 
at length, and the debacle totally altered the form and features of the valley for — 
miles below, overspreading everything with a rounded and fluent mass of — 
mud and slime, imbedding vast numbers of trees and vegetables, animals and — 
men, to become the organic remains of the post-tertiaries to our own remote — 
posterity, should the present ceconomy of the earth last long enough. ’ 
How well does Hamilton remark of all this !—* What causes a confusion 
in all accounts of this (and he might have added of all earthquakes) is the — 
not having sufficiently explained the nature and peculiarities of the soil and 
situation. They tell you that a town has been thrown a mile from where it 
stood, but without mentioning one word of a ravine on the edge of which it 
stood (as at Terra Nuova) ; that woods and corn-fields have been removed 
in the same manner, when, in truth, it is but upon a large scale what we see — 
