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XLV 



ALLUVIAL DEPOSITS AND CAVES. 



513 



comitrj strewed over with a superficial covering of sand 

 several feet thick. In sinking wells in the environs, masses 

 of shingle and boulders have been reached resembling those 

 now in the river-channels of the same district, under a 

 deposit of thirty feet of reddish loam. Captain Cautlej, 

 therefore, who directed the excavations, supposes that the 

 matter discharged bj torrents has gradually raised the whole 

 country skirting the base of the lower hills ; and that the 

 ancient town, having been originally built in a hollow, was 

 submerged by floods, and covered over with sediment seven- 

 teen feet in thickness.'^ 



We are informed, by M. Boblaye, that in the Morea, the 

 formation termed ceramique, consisting of pottery, tiles, and 

 bricks, intermixed with various works of art, enters so 

 largely into the alluvium and vegetable soil upon the plains 

 of Greece, and into hard and crystalline breccias which have 

 been formed at the foot of declivities, that it constitutes 



i 



an important stratum which might, even in the absence of 

 zoological characters, serve to mark part of the human epoch 

 in a most indestructible manner.-f* 



Lmidslips. — The landslip, by suddenly precipitating large 

 masses of rock and soil into a valley, overwhelms a multitude 

 of animals, and sometimes buries permanently whole villages, 

 with their inhabitants and large herds of cattle. Thus three 

 villages, with their entire population, were covered, when the 

 mountain of Piz fell in 1772, in the district of Treviso, in 

 the state of Yenice,t and part of Mount Grenier, south of 

 Chambery, in Savoy, which fell down in the year 1248, 

 buried five parishes, including the town and church of St. 



Andre, the ruins occupying an extent of about nine square 

 miles. § 



The number of lives lost by the slide of the Eossberg, in 

 Switzerland, in 1806, was estimated at more than 800, a 

 great number of the bodies, as well as several villages and 

 scattered houses, being buried deep under mud and rock. 



* Journ. of Asiat. Soc, Nos. xxv. and 

 xxi ., 1834. 



t tT.iZ ^'^- ^^^^ *°°^- ^^ii- P- yo\. i. p. 201. 



I Malte-Brun's Geog., vol. i. p. 435. 

 Bakewell, Travels in the Tarentaise, 



117, Feb. 1831. 

 VOL. II. 



L L 



\- 



