mulation of a harvest cast into the stream a
little way above, which the current could not sweep away: it made a
nucleus for alluvial deposit, and the island gradually arose. Several
hundred years afterward it was built into the form of a ship, as bridges
and wharves are built, with a temple in the midst, and a tall obelisk
set up in guise of its mast. In mediaeval days a church replaced the
heathen fane, and now it stands between its two bridges, a huddle of
houses, terraces and gardens, whence one looks down on the fine mass of
the Ponte Rotto (Broken Bridge), whose shattered arches pause in
mid-stream, and across to the low arch of the Cloaca Maxima and the
exquisite little circular temple of Vesta. From here down, the river is
in full view from either side until it passes beyond the walls near the
Monte Testaccio--on one side the Ripa Grande (Great Bank or Wharf), a
long series of quays, on the other the Marmorata or marble landing,
where the ships from the quarries unload. Here, on each side, all sorts
of small craft lie moored, not betokening a very extensive commerce from
their size and shape, but quaint and oddly rigged, making a very good
fore-or back-ground, according as one looks at the picture. The
Marmorata is at the foot of the Aventine, the most lonely and unvisited
of the Seven Hills. From among the vegetable-gardens and cypress-groves
which clothe its long flank rise large, formless piles, whose
foundations are as old as the Eternal City, and whose superstructures
are the wreck of temples of the kingly and republican periods, and
palaces and villas of imperial times, and haughty feudal abodes, only to
be distinguished from one another by the antiquary amid their
indiscriminate ruin and the tangle of wild-briers and fern, ivy and
trailers with which they are overgrown. On the summit no trace of
ancient Rome is to be seen. There are no dwellings of men on this
deserted ground: a few small and very early Christian churches have
replaced the temples which once stood here, to be in their turn
neglected and forsaken: they stand forlornly apart, separated by
vineyards and high blank walls. On the brow of the hill is the esplanade
of a modern fort, and within its quiet precincts are the church and
priory of the Knights of Malta--nothing but a chapel and small villa as
abandoned as the rest. After toiling up a steep and narrow lane between
two walls, our carriage stopped at a solid wooden gateway, and the
coachma