In the midst of this desolate tract, which is, however, here and there interspersed with fertile spots, rises the mountain on which Volterra is situated, where the inhabitants breathe a pure and keen atmosphere, almost perpetually cool, and only die of pleurisies and apoplexies; while below, on the banks of the Cecina, which in full sigjit winds its way to the sea, they die of fevers.  One of the ravines of which I have spoken,—­the balza they call it at Volterra—­has ploughed a deep chasm on the north side of this mountain, and is every year rapidly approaching the city on its summit.  I stood on its edge and looked down a bank of soft red earth five hundred feet in height.  A few rods in front of me I saw where a road had crossed the spot in which the gulf now yawned; the tracks of the last year’s carriages were seen reaching to the edge on both sides.  The ruins of a convent were close at hand, the inmates of which, two or three years since, had been removed by the government to the town for safety.  These will soon be undermined by the advancing chasm, together with a fine piece of old Etruscan wall, once inclosing the city, built of enormous uncemented parallelograms of stone, and looking as if it might be the work of the giants who lived before the flood; a neighboring church will next fall into the gulf, which finally, if means be not taken to prevent its progress, will reach and sap the present walls of the city, swallowing up what time has so long spared.

“A few hundred crowns,” said an inhabitant of Volterra to me, “would stop all this mischief.  A wall at the bottom of the chasm, and a heap of branches of trees or other rubbish, to check the fall of the earth, are all that would be necessary.”

I asked why these means were not used.

“Because,” he replied, “those to whom the charge of these matters belongs, will not take the trouble.  Somebody must devise a plan for the purpose, and somebody must take upon himself the labor of seeing it executed.  They find it easier to put it off.”

The antiquities of Volterra consist of an Etruscan burial-ground, in which the tombs still remain, pieces of the old and incredibly massive Etruscan wall, including a far larger circuit than the present city, two Etruscan gates of immemorial antiquity, older doubtless than any thing at Rome, built of enormous stones, one of them serving even yet as an entrance to the town, and a multitude of cinerary vessels, mostly of alabaster, sculptured with numerous figures in alto relievo.  These figures are sometimes allegorical representations, and sometimes embody the fables of the Greek mythology.  Among them are some in the most perfect style of Grecian art, the subjects of which are taken from the poems of Homer; groups representing the besiegers of Troy and its defenders, or Ulysses with his companions and his ships.  I gazed with exceeding delight on these works of forgotten artists, who had the verses of Homer by heart—­works just drawn from the tombs where they had been buried for thousands of years, and looking as if fresh from the chisel.