DRAINING OF LAKE CELANO. 431 
ber will be augmented to 40,000 when the drainage shall be 
completely effected. 
' The new tunnel follows the line of the Claudian emissary— 
which though badly executed was admirably engineered—but 
its axis is at a somewhat lower level than that of the old 
gallery, and its cross-section is about two hundred and fifteen 
square feet, allowing a discharge of about 2,400 cubic feet 
to the second, while the Roman work had a cross-section of 
only one hundred and two square feet, with a possible delivery 
of 424 cubic feet to the second. 
In consequence of the nature of the rock and of the soil, 
which had been loosened and shattered by the falling in of 
much of the crown and walls of the old tunnel—every stone 
of which it was necessary to remove in the progress of the 
work—and the great head of water in the lake from unusually 
wet seasons, the technical difficulties to be surmounted were 
most baffling and discouraging in character, and of such extreme 
gravity that it may well be doubted whether the art of engi- 
neering has anywhere triumphed over more serious obstacles. 
This great “victory of peace”—probably the grandest work 
of physical improvement ever effected by the means, the 
energy, and the munificence of a single individual—is of no 
small geographical and economical, as well as sanitary, impor- 
tance, but it has a still higher moral value as an almost unique 
example of the exercise of public spirit, courage, and persever- 
ance in the accomplishment of a noble and beneficent enter- 
prise by a private citizen.* 
The crater-lake of Nemi, in the same volcanic region as that 
of Albano, is also drained by a subterranean tunnel probably of 
* The draining of Lake Celano was undertaken by a company, but Prince 
Alessandro Torlonia of Rome bought up the interest of all the shareholders 
and has executed the entire work at his own private expense. Montricher, 
the celebrated constructor of the great aqueduct of Marseilles, was the engi- 
neer who designed and partly carried out the plans, and after his lamentable 
death the work has been directed with equal ability by Bermont and Brisse. 
—See LEON DE Rotrov, Prosciugamento de Lago Fucino, 8vo. Firenze, 
1871. 
