At
Malalbergo (Half-Way) We Crossed The Reno In A Boat.
I put up at the Tre
Mori in Ferrara.
Having remained two and half days here I have had time to
inspect and examine almost everything of consequence that the city affords.
The city itself has an imposing, venerable appearance and can boast of some
fine buildings; yet with all this there is an air of melancholy about it.
It is not peopled in proportion to its size and grass is seen growing in
several of the streets. I believe the unhealthiness of the environing
country is the cause of the decrease of population, for Ferrara lies on a
marshy plain, very liable to inundation In the centre of the city stands
the ancient Palace of the Dukes of Ferrara, a vast Gothic edifice, square,
and flanked with round towers, and a large court-yard in the centre. It was
in this court-yard that Hugo and Parisina were decapitated. From the top of
this palace a noble view of the plain of the Po represents itself, and you
see the meanderings of that King of Rivers, as the Italian poets term it.
As the Po runs thro' a perfectly flat country, and is encreased and swollen
by the torrents from the Alps and Appennines that fall into the smaller
rivers, which unite their tributary streams with the Po and accompany him
as his seguaci to the Adriatic, this country is liable to the most
dreadful inundations: flocks and herds, farm-houses and sometimes whole
villages are swept away.
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