Murray's guide-book is exceedingly vague and unsatisfactory along this
route; and whenever we asked Gaetano the name of a village or a castle,
he gave some one which we had never heard before, and could find nothing
of in the book. We made out the river Nar, however, or what I supposed
to be such, though he called it Nera. It flows through a most stupendous
mountain-gorge; winding its narrow passage between high hills, the broad
sides of which descend steeply upon it, covered with trees and shrubbery,
that mantle a host of rocky roughnesses, and make all look smooth. Here
and there a precipice juts sternly forth. We saw an old castle on a
hillside, frowning down into the gorge; and farther on, the gray tower of
Narni stands upon a height, imminent over the depths below, and with its
battlemented castle above now converted into a prison, and therefore kept
in excellent repair. A long winding street passes through Narni,
broadening at one point into a market-place, where an old cathedral
showed its venerable front, and the great dial of its clock, the figures
on which were numbered in two semicircles of twelve points each; one, I
suppose, for noon, and the other for midnight.
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