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Updated: May 21, 2025
The country through which we were travelling was covered with a cindery-looking volcanic tufa, and might be called "Katakaumena." The description we received of the Moamba Falls seemed to promise something grand.
Returning to the shore, which now begins to incline more westwardly, we come to another swell of tufa, which has all the characteristic fertility and abruptness of that peculiar formation, a vast and populous town of near half a million of souls being seated, in nearly equal parts, on the limits of the plain and along the margin of the water, or on the hill-sides, climbing to their summits.
These stones came from Rancocus Island, where they were found in inexhaustible quantities, partaking of the character of tufa. The largest of them were landed at the Reef, the loading and unloading being principally done by the Kannakas, while the smallest were delivered at different points along the channel, according to the wishes of the owners of the land.
We came next to the vestiges of Herculaneum, which is destroyed like Pompeii but by the lava or molten stone, which cannot be removed, whereas the tufa or volcanic ashes can be with ease removed from Pompeii, which it has filled up lightly.
They seek in our islands for the earth most similar to this, and prefer a yellowish red volcanic tufa. It is sold secretly in our public markets; but this is an abuse which the police ought to correct. The negroes who have this habit are so fond of caouac, that no chastisement will prevent their eating it."
I was shooting in the marshes which surround the ruins of Gabia, and where there are still remains supposed to be of the Alexandrine aqueduct; I observed a small insulated hill, apparently entirely composed of travertine, and from its summit there were formations of tufa which had evidently been produced by running water, but the whole mass was now perfectly dry and encrusted by vegetables.
The southern front of the grounds of the Villa Violante is bounded and upheld by a wall of tufa fifty feet in height and some four hundred feet long. About midway of its length a semicircular bench of marble, with a rail, is built out over one of the buttresses. From this point is visible the whole bay and harbor of Naples, and about one third of the city lies in sight, five hundred feet below.
For nearly a month after the eruption vast quantities of fine white ashes, mixed with volumes of steam, were thrown out from the crater; the clouds thus generated were condensed into heavy rain, and large tracts of the Vesuvian slopes were deluged with volcanic mud. It filled ravines, such as Fosso Grande, and concreted and hardened there into pumiceous tufa a very instructive phenomenon.
However, when the worthy man pointed out some vestiges of Roma Quadrata remnants of walls which really seemed to date from the foundation of the city Pierre began to feel interested, and a first touch of emotion made his heart beat. This emotion was certainly not due to any beauty of scene, for he merely beheld a few courses of tufa blocks, placed one upon the other and uncemented.
It is no doubt because the Almohads built in stone that so much of what they made survives. The Merinids took to rubble and a soft tufa, and the Cherifian dynasties built in clay like the Spaniards in South America. And so seventeenth century Meknez has perished while the Almohad walls and towers of the tenth century still stand.
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