Leaving Terni before day, we drove up the long vale towards Narni.  The roads were frozen hard; the ascent becoming more difficult, the vetturino was obliged to stop at a farm-house and get another pair of horses, with which, and a handsome young contadino as postillion, we reached Narni in a short time.  In climbing the hill, we had a view of the whole valley of Terni, shut in on all sides by snow-crested Appenines, and threaded by the Nar, whose waters flow “with many windings, through the vale!”

At Otricoli, while dinner was preparing, I walked around the crumbling battlements to look down into the valley and trace the far windings of the Tiber.  In rambling through the crooked streets, we saw everywhere the remains of the splendor which this place boasted in the days of Rome.  Fragments of fluted pillars stood here and there in the streets; large blocks of marble covered with sculpture and inscriptions were built into the houses, defaced statues used as door-ornaments, and the steppingstone to our rude inn, worn every day by the feet of grooms and vetturini, contained some letters of an inscription which may have recorded the glory of on emperor.

Traveling with a vetturino, is unquestionably the pleasantest way of seeing Italy.  The easy rate of the journey allows time for becoming well acquainted with the country, and the tourist is freed from the annoyance of quarrelling with cheating landlords.  A translation of our written contract, will best explain this mode of traveling: 

  “CARRIAGE” FOR ROME.

“Our contract is, to be conducted to Rome for the sum of twenty francs each, say 20f. and the buona mano, if we are well served.  We must have from the vetturino, Giuseppe Nerpiti, supper each night, a free chamber with two beds, and fire, until we shall arrive at Rome.

  “I, Geronymo Sartarelli, steward of the Inn of the White Cross, at
  Foligno, in testimony of the above contract.”

Beyond Otricoli, we passed through some relics of an age anterior to Rome.  A few soiled masses of masonry, black with age, stood along the brow of the mountain, on whose extremity were the ruins of a castle of the middle ages.  We crossed the Tiber on a bridge built by Augustus Caesar, and reached Borghetto as the sun was gilding with its last rays the ruined citadel above.  As the carriage with its four horses was toiling slowly up the hill, we got out and walked before, to gaze on the green meadows of the Tiber.

On descending from Narni, I noticed a high, prominent mountain, whose ridgy back, somewhat like the profile of a face, reminded me of the Traunstein, in Upper Austria.  As we approached, its form gradually changed, until it stood on the Campagna

    “Like a long-swept wave about to break,
    That on the curl hangs pausing”—­