One Of The Ravines Of Which I Have Spoken, - The
_Balza_ They Call It At Volterra - Has Ploughed A Deep Chasm On The North
Side Of This Mountain, And Is Every Year Rapidly Approaching The City On
Its Summit.
I stood on its edge and looked down a bank of soft red earth
five hundred feet in height.
A few rods in front of me I saw where a road
had crossed the spot in which the gulf now yawned; the tracks of the last
year's carriages were seen reaching to the edge on both sides. The ruins
of a convent were close at hand, the inmates of which, two or three years
since, had been removed by the government to the town for safety. These
will soon be undermined by the advancing chasm, together with a fine piece
of old Etruscan wall, once inclosing the city, built of enormous
uncemented parallelograms of stone, and looking as if it might be the work
of the giants who lived before the flood; a neighboring church will next
fall into the gulf, which finally, if means be not taken to prevent its
progress, will reach and sap the present walls of the city, swallowing up
what time has so long spared.
"A few hundred crowns," said an inhabitant of Volterra to me, "would stop
all this mischief. A wall at the bottom of the chasm, and a heap of
branches of trees or other rubbish, to check the fall of the earth, are
all that would be necessary."
I asked why these means were not used.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 391 of 396
Words from 105890 to 106153
of 107287
