ch they were formed, and that now the
rains were sweeping them down to the Mediterranean, to fill its bed and
cause its waters to encroach upon the land. It was impossible for me to
prevent the apprehension from passing through my mind, that such might be
the fate of other quarters of the globe in ages yet to come, that their
rocks must crumble and their mountains be levelled, until the waters shall
again cover the face of the earth, unless new mountains shall be thrown up
by eruptions of internal fire. They told me in Volterra, that this
frightful region had once been productive and under cultivation, but that
after a plague which, four or five hundred years since, had depopulated
the country, it was abandoned and neglected, and the rains had reduced it
to its present state.

In the midst of this desolate tract, which is, however, here and there
interspersed with fertile spots, rises the mountain on which Volterra is
situated, where the inhabitants breathe a pure and keen atmosphere, almost
perpetually cool, and only die of pleurisies and apoplexies; while below,
on the banks of the Cecina, which in full sigjit winds its way to the sea,
they die of fevers. 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 t