I need not tell you that this scheme was never executed. After this the channel continued to perform its duty, till about the year 1400; that is, for the space of 1,680 years from the period of its first execution; but it appears at that time to have become so much choked up, that the superior valley was again subject to frequent inundations. The Reatines began to open a new canal, but the inhabitants of Terni opposed it, and a war between the two cities was the consequence. Braccio di Montone, tyrant of Perugia (that name is well applied in every sense to the Italian Reguli of the fifteenth century) interfered, and a new channel was made; but probably on a small scale, as it was soon filled up again, and in 1546, we find Sangallo appointed by Paul the Third to make a sufficient opening. Terni and the cities below the fall, including Rome itself, raised a great outcry against this undertaking, on the plea that they should be subject to frequent inundations, if an outlet were given to these waters. The channel was however made, but it was soon found that it had not been cut sufficiently deep, and in 1596, under the direction of Giovanni Fontana, a new work was undertaken. This architect, or rather as we should call him engineer, appears to have contented himself with re-opening for the greatest part of the way, the old channel of M. C. Dentatus, but as that made a very obtuse angle towards the fall, Fontana abandoned it there, and continued his work in a straight line to the valley of the Nar. Owing to this change the Velino joined that river at right angles, at the foot of a rock called Pennarosa, in a part where its bed was very much confined; and moreover it brought down with it some considerable fragments of rock. These causes combined forced back the Nar, and occasioned considerable inundations in the upper part of that river; new quarrels were the consequence, and numerous inconsistencies were written. Father Gaudio, on the part of the inhabitants of Terni, undertook to prove that a larger river rushing with the utmost violence into a smaller one, at right angles with the course of the latter, could not possibly occasion any rise of its waters above the junction, but on the contrary must give them an impulse which would tend to drain the superior valley. These disputes were not settled till the year 1785, when a new cut brought off the waters of the Velino obliquely into the Nar, and all complaints ceased. We are conducted to different points to look down on this tremendous fall, but the best view is from a little summerhouse, on a projecting point considerably below the brow, which is said to have been built for the accommodation of Napoleon. The lower part of the cataract is not however visible at this point, but we contemplate a most tremendous fall, rushing among rocks, and over a precipice so perpendicular, that the water is detached from it for a considerable distance, and loses itself in thunder among the foam and