The road about Narni and Augustus’s Bridge is beautifully picturesque. I set off directly to the cascade, with which I was as much delighted as I was disappointed with that of Tivoli. It is difficult to conceive anything more magnificent than the whole of this scenery.
Florence, June 10th, 1830
The horses were announced, and I was obliged to break off my account of Terni and resume it here, where I arrived after a tedious journey of forty hours, from Rome.
Most people are dragged up the mountain by bovi, see the upper part of the fall, and walk down. But as the bovi were not at hand, I reversed the usual order, walked to the bottom, and then toiled to the top. The walk, which is lovely, lies through the grounds of a count, who has a house close to the Nera (the Nera (Nar) is the river into which the Velino runs, and in which there is very good trout fishing), where FALLS OF TERNI the Queen of England once lived for a month. At the different points of view are little cabins (which would be very picturesque if they were less rudely constructed) for the accommodation of artists and other travellers. This gentleman has got a house which he reserves for the use of artists, of which there are always several on the spot during the summer. They pay nothing for the accommodation, but each is obliged to leave a drawing when he goes away; and by this means he has got an interesting collection, of the scenery of Terni. Nothing can be more accurate, as well as beautiful, than Byron’s description of the cascade, and it is wonderful in his magnificent poetry, how he has kept his imagination within the bounds of truth, and neither added a circumstance nor lavished an epithet to which it is not entitled.
Horribly beautiful! but on the verge
From side to side, beneath the glittering morn,
An Iris sits amidst the infernal surge,
Like Hope upon a death-bed, and, unworn
Its steady dyes, while all around is torn
By the distracted waters, bears serene
Its brilliant hues with all their beams unshorn:
Resembling, ’mid the torture of the scene,
Love watching Madness with unalterable mien.
The rainbows are very various, seen from different points: from the middle, where the river rushes from the vortex of the great fall to plunge into another, the stream appears to be painted with a broad layer of divers colours, never broken or mixed till they are tossed up in the cloud of spray, and mingled with it in a thousand variegated sparkles. Above, an iris bestrides the moist green hill which rises by the side of the fall; and, as the spray is whirled up in greater or less abundance, it perpetually and rapidly changes its colours, now disappearing altogether, and now beaming with the utmost vividness. The man told me that at night the moon forms a white rainbow on the hill. There is a delicious but dangerous coolness all about the cascade. All the scenery about is as beautiful as possible. Just above the great fall is the Velinus tearing along in the same channel, which was first made for him by the Roman Consul 2,200 years ago—
Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice—
and there, the guide told me, some years ago a man threw in a young and beautiful wife of whom he was jealous. He took her to see the cascade, and when he got to this part (which is at the end of a narrow path overhung with brushwood) he got rid of the boys who always follow visitors, and after some delay returned alone, and said the woman had fallen in. One scream had been heard, but there was nobody to witness the truth. The mangled body was found in the stream below. Jealousy is probably common here. As I was walking a man passed me, going in great haste to the mountain, but I paid no attention to him. When I got back I heard that he was escaping from justice (into the Abruzzi, which are in the Neapolitan dominions), having stabbed his brother-in-law a few moments before out of jealousy of his wife. The wounded man was still alive, but badly hurt. The murderer was un bravo mechanico.
The mountain and the river have undergone many revolutions. The rock through which the present path is cut has been formed entirely by petrified deposits, and there are marks in various parts of former cascades, from which the water has been turned away. Clement VIII. (Aldobrandini) turned the water into its present course. At the bottom the old outlet of the Romans is dry, but is marked with that solidity which defies time, like all their works of this kind. Great part of the road from Terni is beautiful, and the Papal towns and villages appear to be in much better condition than on the other road. Some of them perched on the mountains are remarkably picturesque.