The character of the Lombardic plains is most strikingly expressed
by the ancient walls of its cities, composed for the most part of large
rounded Alpine pebbles alternating with narrow courses of brick, and was
curiously illustrated in 1848 by the ramparts of these same pebbles
thrown up four or five feet high round every field, to check the
Austrian cavalry in the battle under the walls of Verona.
The finer dust among which these pebbles are dispersed is taken up by
the rivers, fed into continual strength by the Alpine snow, so that,
however pure their waters may be when they issue from the lakes at the
foot of the great chain, they become of the color and opacity of clay
before they reach the Adriatic; the sediment which they bear is at once
thrown down as they enter the sea, forming a vast belt of low land along
the eastern coast of Italy. The powerful stream of the Po of course
builds forward the fastest; on each side of it, north and south, there
is a tract of marsh, fed by more feeble streams, and less liable to
rapid change than the delta of the central river.
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