Litchfield enquirer., 1860-03-01
Whole No. 1918.

on the hospital train," as wa co,,od +b.
 weaker vessels of the party. S- p
 and myself walked on thirty-tvo mile,
 through some beautiful country, as usual passing the little temple of Cltnmna by the
 road-side-at Spoleto, visiting Q wonderful
 aqueduct of the Lombard dukes Seventh century )-between 500 and TOO feet lon0
 and in it's centre 266 feet high-of nine straight, solid, unadorned piers, of small stone masonry: it was on some account. nearly as grand as the Roman Pont du Garu. in Languedoc. Then we crossed mountain pass, 3,72S feet high, and got to Terni for the night. "Wednesday, a walk of five miles to the fslls and back Here I was most happily disappointed-not having expected so much of real sublimity as we found Then eight miles on, to Nami, as usual, up a steep hill: here is one noble arch of an Augustau bridge in the old Flaminian way. Thurs day, cloudy, and, toward the close, rainy day, we started among and over the hills by the road which follows the course of the Via Flaminian. Socrate appeared in sight, is0- lated, and singularly grand-though not now i" alta nire candidam." Passed various tombs, in the rock or masonry, indicating the course of the old road-crossed the Iii. Der, and slept at Civita Castellana, twenty miles. This was the Etruscan town of Fa- lerium Vetus-on @ plain, but almost com pletely isolated by deep, sudden. rocky ra- vines, with precipitous sides, which were per fectly honeycombed with tombs, rising one above the other to the top of the cliff When the Romans took and destroyed this town. they built another for tEe Etruscans, and. except in its inaccessibility, on the Etruscan model, out on the plain three and half miles off. To this town, Falerium Novum.
 we walked out Friday morning. finding along our way an ancient road, where wheels and
 horses hoofs had worn ruts foot deep in the soft rock, and still more tombs cut deep in the low cliffs by the road side. Reaching the town, we found such utter desolation as
 should hardly have looked for this side of Assyria. The great, massive, splendid wall of huge cut stones is still nearly complete in all it's circuit. Around it are scattered tombs, tombs, only tombs--yawning in the sides of ravines, or rising in pyramidal piles of masonry Not house. not man, not sign of life within sight. We crawled in through little arehed postern gate, nearly choked up by big blocks fallen from the walls; and found close to us, somewhat sur. prised by the apparition, solitary man, turning over stones and earth in the corner of what was once the great city. A space now of some thirty acres-all weeds, bram- bles aHd briars--for thorns seem always to aouxish in desolation; not broken by so much as solitary column or heap-one broad, un- desert surface, around which rose the remnants of the walls. Toward enc side 0 convent with its church had been built out of the ruins seven hundred years ago; but many years since its roof fell in--so even there, entering at the great west door, we stumbled over the ruins of ruins--blocks of white marble, whose broad, sharp Roman letters had been boldly cut across to fit them into new places in the more modern temple, but having fallen out, lay there for relics of two ages: all was vacant and desolate.
 Returning to Civita Castellana, we went on in the afternoon sixteen miles further,
 upon the Via Flaminia--and much of our
 way we had for our companionship and de- light the real old road itself, in stretches of a mile or more, close alongside of ours, 90
 that sometimes we preferred to walk upon 1t with its magnificent polygonal pavement of grey lava, twelve feet wide and ten inches thick. never before realised what grand work Roman road was. Sleeping atnight at little village, we started early Saturday morning for our sixteen miles to Rome. In about two miles, turning around little knoll, I saw before me, dim but huge, across the brown, bare, rolling Campagna, the end of the journey--the dome. of St. Peters.