The place is now occupied by a
convent, under the wall of which I gathered _Orinthogalum
nutans_; and from its neighborhood I enjoyed a panoramic
view, surely the most glorious, in its combination of
natural beauty and grandeur of historical recollections, to
be found anywhere on earth. The eye ranged from Terracina on
one side to Veii on the other, and beyond Veii to the hills
of Sutrium and Nepete, once covered by the Cimmian forests,
then deemed an impenetrable barrier between the interior of
Etruria and Rome. Below my feet the Alban mountain, with all
its forest-covered folds, and in one of them the dark-blue
Lake of Nemi; that of Albano, I think, was invisible. To the
north, in the dim distance, the Eternal City, to the west
the eternal sea, for eastern boundary, the long line of
Sabine mountains from Soracte past Tibur and away towards
Proeneste. The range then passed behind the Alban group, but
re-appeared to the south-east as the mountain crescent of
Cora and Pometia, enclosing between its horns the Pontine
marshes, which lay spread out below as far as the sea line,
extending east and west from Terracina in the bay of Fondi,
the Volscian Anxur, to the angle of the coast where rises
suddenly, between the marshes and the sea, the mountain
promontory of Circeii, celebrated alike in history and in
fable.
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