Campbell, Elizabeth (1783 – 1861) – Italy; Lazio, ‘Pozzo di Vico [Santullo] near Alatri’.

EXTRACT FROM THE ARTIST'S JOURNAL: The Pozzo di Vico is considered a great natural curiosity & held in great horror by the country people as containing all sorts of noxious animals & other "& that no one can enter it & live." It was found one man had survived the experiment three years & another was killed by the ropes breaking to which he was suspended. In an immense sort of plain of low brush wood & rocks we reached the famed "Pozzo" which certainly is a natural curiosity. I suspect far from being a lonely instance in this country & which our imagination had been raised to an absurd stretch by being told "it was four miles round, that green fields & woods of large timber were at the bottom, all manner of fruits &c." The Pozzo is about the third of a mile round, & judging by the time required for a stone to reach the bottom "180 feet deep" - An entire circle of rocks stalactites hanging from them in very handsome shapes mingled with funguses, bushes, &c, & fine rich colouring of the stone. The bottom entirely covered with brambles & ash trees & in one place we thought was water but quite level & was low brush wood. - Various were the conjectures upon the origin of the Pozzo - my own opinion leans more to its being a quarry than a natural cavity, especially as one lower place looked as if it had been an entrance, & thus very like several in Sicily rather strengthened my conjecture. 11th April

1 in stock