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Updated: September 21, 2025
This cave was in a mass of tufa rock rising abruptly from the flat, green fields, and not far from the aqueduct, three tiers of brick arches, one above the other, joined by massive masonry, through which fresh water was brought in big leaden pipes to the city. Hundreds of long-horned cattle, white and clean and strong, were grazing in the fields.
Here and there were a few grotesque blackened and branchless stumps. The site of the devastated forest was even more barren than Tadorn Marsh. The irruption of the lava had been complete. Where formerly sprang up that charming verdure, the soil was now nothing but a savage mass of volcanic tufa.
In 1786 an observer noted it as being composed of high peaks; but atmospheric influences have reduced it to the appearance of a single wasting tufa cone, similar to those which stud the northern slopes of Mauna Kea.
It will have to fight against the sand that slips and gradually fills up the small amount of empty space obtained; it will perhaps, without crowbar or pickaxe, have to cut itself a gallery through something tantamount to tufa, that is to say, through earth which a shower has rendered compact. For the descent, the grub has its fangs; for the assent, the fly has nothing.
Crags, towers, and pinnacles of porphyry were mingled with huge convoluted masses of light brown trachyte, of tufa either pure white or white veined with crimson, of black and gray columnar basalts, of red, orange, green, and black scoria, with adornments of obsidian, amygdaloids, rosettes of quartz crystal and opalescent chalcedony.
It consists of a series of vaults excavated out of the solid tufa rock, where it slopes down from the Capitoline Hill into the Forum, each lined with massive blocks of red volcanic stone.
In coarse grained gravel and carbuncular sand the supply is surer and more lasting, and it has a good taste. In red tufa it is copious and good, if it does not run down through the fissures and escape. At the foot of mountains and in lava it is more plentiful and abundant, and here it is also colder and more wholesome.
But these all ended in one large circular hall with a square pedestal of tufa topped with a slab of marble at one end of it. "By Jove!" cried Kennedy in an ecstasy, as Burger swung his lantern over the marble. "It is a Christian altar probably the first one in existence. Here is the little consecration cross cut upon the corner of it. No doubt this circular space was used as a church."
Pitilessly he pierced their enchanted walls, discovering their pretense, burning away their shadowy glory, baring them for what they were masses of jumbled rock and splintered spires; rain-gutted wraiths of clay, volcanic rock, the tumbled malpais and the tufa of the land. Black shadows shifted. That which had been the high-arched entrance to a mighty fortress was now a shallow hollow in a hill.
Suddenly Tufa deserted his new master, was joined by Odoacer, who came to Faventia, and certain of the Ostrogothic nobles, if not all of them, were slaughtered. The expedition was lost and not the expedition alone: Milan was no longer safe. There he established himself in winter quarters.
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