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some of these hills being covered, although there are few 
in this condition. It may be difficult to coat the steep sides 
with any vegetation, but when the top is covered this diffi- 
culty diminishes. Still this is work for many men and for 
a long time. 
A peculiar feature of the unwholesome land struck me. 
It began exactly at the foot of the hills. There was no 
gradual slope, but you came down from the hill and 
were at once on the plain stretching out for miles. This, of 
course, favours violent floods, and may be coexistent with 
very bad drainage of the plain. Still, as it has been, 
remarked, the Campagna around Pome is not a plain surface, 
neither are the lower parts the least healthy. 
I hope to think more fully of this if I describe the various 
opinions on the cause of malaria; at present it comes 
only incidentally. The great engineering works which only 
governments can undertake promise to be of value, but the 
planting to which I specially allude seems to point it out as 
the work of private men. This view of the subject, if 
correct, must be most comforting to Italy, because it prevents 
that delay which is needful before great numbers can be 
brought to act in concert. If enough can be done privately 
to enable the agricultural labourers to inhabit the plains 
without fear, the larger schemes will come in time. The 
Tiber is dammed up by bridges, and one, namely Pons 
Sublicius, lies now at the bottom, and the water flows over 
with difficulty. No wonder the bed rises, and no wonder 
the Tiber bursts all bounds at times. It did so even in the 
time of Horace, who tells us in his second ode his fear of 
another flood as in the time of Pyrrha, when the fish rose 
into the trees or paid a visit to the mountains. 
This shows that even by reducing the bed of the Tiber 
to the level it had in the time of Augustus, floods would not 
cease, and deepening is not at all likely to be a sufficient 
measure. It is a pity that the double bed should be so 
