Nothing can be prettier or more tasteful in their
arrangement than these variegated carpets of vegetables. A great
cistern of running water crowns the height of the ground, which is used
for the purposes of irrigation, and towards nightfall the vent is
opened, and you may see the gardeners imbanking the channelled rows to
let the inundation flow through hundreds of little lanes of
intersection and canals between the beds, and then banking them up at
the entrance when a sufficient quantity of water has entered. In this
way they fertilize and refresh the soil, which else would parch under
the continuous sun. And this, indeed, is all the fertilization they
need,--so strong is the soil all over the Campagna. The accretions and
decay of thousands of years have covered it with a loam whose richness
and depth are astonishing. Dig where you will, for ten feet down, and
you do not pass through its wonderfully fertile loam into gravel, and
the slightest labor is repaid a hundred-fold.
As one looks from the Villa Negroni windows, he cannot fail to be
impressed by the strange changes through which this wonderful city has
passed. The very spot on which Nero, the insane emperor-artist, fiddled
while Rome was burning has now become a vast kitchen-garden, belonging
to Prince Massimo, (himself a descendant, as he claims, of Fabius
Cunctator,) where men no longer, but only lettuces, asparagus, and
artichokes, are ruthlessly cut down.
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