g2 ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF 



the Mincio and Tartaro, if the Po still flowed southward of Ferraro. 

 Afterwards we come to the Delta Venetum, which appears to have 

 occupied the site of the lake or lagoon of Commachio. This Delta was 

 traversed hy seven branches of the Eridanus, or Vadis Padus, Podin- 

 cus or Po, as it was variously called, which had on its left bank, at the 

 various ramifications of these mouths, the city of Trigopolis (Trigo- 

 boli), whose site could not be very distant from Ferraro. The seven 

 lakes of the Delta were called Septem Maria, and Hatria is sometimes 

 called Urbs Septem Marium, or the city of the seven seas or lakes. 



' ' Pursuing the line of coast more north from Hatria, we reach the 

 principal embouchure or mouth of the Athesis, called also Fossa 

 Philistina, and iEstuarium Altini, an island sea, separated from the 

 ocean by a chain of islets, in the midst of which is a small archipelago 

 of other islands, called Rialtum, on which cluster Venice now stands. 

 The yEstuarium Altini is the lagoon of Venice, which only commu- 

 nicates with the sea by five passages ; the small islands which have 

 been united to form a continuous dyke. 



" Eastward of the lagoons, and northward of the city of Este, are 

 the Euganian mountains, forming in the midst of a vast alluvial plain 

 a singular and isolated group of conical hills, near which the ancients 

 fixed the spot of the celebrated fall of Phaeton. Some writers assert 

 that this fable originated from the vast masses of inflamed materials 

 cast by the volcanic eruptions into the mouths of the Po. It is certain 

 that a great quantity of volcanic productions are found in the vicinity 

 of Padua and Verona. 



" The earliest information which I have attained respecting the si- 

 tuation of coast of the Adriatic, at the mouths of the Po, has, from the 

 twelfth century, some exactness. At this period all the waters of the 

 Po flowed southward of Ferrara into the Po di Volano and the Po di 

 Primaro, ramifications which then flowed over what is now occupied 

 by the lagoon of Commachio. The two mouths with which the Po 

 afterwards made an irruption northward of Ferrara, were called re- 

 spectively the river of Corbola, Longola, or Mazorno ; and the river of 

 Toi. The former, which was most northward, the Tartaro or Canal 

 Bianco, near the sea ; the latter was increased at Ariano by a branch 

 of the Po, called the riyer Goro.' 



" The coast of the sea was possibly inclined from south to north, a 

 a distance of ten or twelve thousand metres (between six and eight 

 English miles) from the meridian of Adria ; it then passed the western 

 angle of Mesola ; and Loreo, north of Mesola, was only distant about 

 two thousand metres (more than a mile). 



