any reminiscence
been preserved as to the period or occasion of the establishment
of a frontier line so important in its results. We find, at the
time when our history begins, the flat and marshy tracts to the
south of the Alban range in the hands of Umbro-Sabellian stocks, the
Rutuli and Volsci; Ardea and Velitrae are no longer in the number
of originally Latin towns. Only the central portion of that region
between the Tiber, the spurs of the Apennines, the Alban Mount, and
the sea--a district of about 700 square miles, not much larger than
the present canton of Zurich--was Latium proper, the "plain,"(2)
as it appears to the eye of the observer from the heights of Monte
Cavo. Though the country is a plain, it is not monotonously flat.
With the exception of the sea-beach which is sandy and formed in
part by the accumulations of the Tiber, the level is everywhere
broken by hills of tufa moderate in height though often somewhat
steep, and by deep fissures of the ground. These alternating
elevations and depressions of the surface lead to the formation
of lakes in winter; and the exhalations proceeding in the heat of
summer from the putrescent organic substances which they contain
engender that noxious fever-laden atmosphere, which in ancient
times tainted the district as it taints it at the present day. It
is a mistake to suppose that these miasmata were first occasioned
by the neglect of cultivation, which was the result of the misgovernment
in the last century of the Republic and under the Papacy. Their
cause lies rather in the want of natural outlets for the water;
and it operates now as it operated thousands of years ago. It is
true, however, that the malaria may to a certain extent be banished
by thoroughness of tillage--a fact which has not yet received its
full explanation, but may be partly accounted for by the circumstance
that the working of the surface accelerates the drying up of the
stagnant waters. It must always remain a remarkable phenomenon,
that a dense agricultural population should have arisen in regions
where no healthy population can at present subsist, and where the
traveller is unwilling to tarry even for a single night, such as
the plain of Latium and the lowlands of Sybaris and Metapontum.
We must bear in mind that man in a low stage of civilization
has generally a quicker perception of what nature demands, and a
greater readiness in conforming to her requirements; perhaps, also,
a more