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Space Infinites Directory 04
Page 01
By 8.30 in the morning of December 5th we entered the mouth of the Madeira River. I was surprised at the sudden change in the appearance of the two rivers. We saw in the Madeira high, gently sloping banks, covered with verdant grass and neat trees and palms along the top of them; whereas along the Amazon the trees stood almost in the water on the recently formed islands and banks. The left bank of the Madeira was of grey and reddish clay (grey below, red above), cut vertically, sometimes actually in steps. Blocks of a rectangular shape, in getting dried up, split and fell over, leaving the banks vertical. The right bank, on the contrary, was gently sloping, descending with a beautiful carpet of green grass into the stream. The islands were charming, with lovely lawns all round. Blackish and deep red rock, vertical and fluted, and with innumerable perforations, could be seen here and there, covered over with a padding of earth from ten to twenty feet deep.
While the Roman legions in the East were acquiring wealth and winning easy conquests, their less fortunate comrades in the West were carrying on a severe struggle with the warlike Gauls, Ligurians, and Spaniards. The Romans had hardly concluded the Second Punic War when they received intelligence that Hamilcar, a Carthaginian officer, had excited several tribes in Northern Italy to take up arms against Rome. These were the Gauls on both sides of the Po, and the Ligurians, a race of hardy mountaineers, inhabiting the upper Apennines and the Maritime Alps. They commenced the war in B.C. 200 by the capture and destruction of the Roman colony of Placentia, and by laying siege to that of Cremona, the two strong-holds of the Roman dominion in Northern Italy. The Romans now set themselves to work, with the characteristic stubbornness of their nation, to subdue thoroughly these tribes. The Insubres and the Cenomani, to the north of the Po, were the first to yield; but the Boii resisted for some years all the efforts of the Romans, and it was not till B.C. 191 that the Consul P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica received their final submission.
Cn. Flavius, the son of a Freedman, and Secretary to Appius Claudius, divulged the forms and times to be observed in legal proceedings. These the Patricians had hitherto kept secret; they alone knew the days when the courts would be held, and the technical pleadings according to which all actions must proceed. But Flavius, having become acquainted with these secrets, by means of his patron, published in a book a list of the formularies to be observed in the several kinds of actions, and also set up in the forum a whited tablet containing a list of all the days on which the courts could be held. In spite of his ignominious birth, he was made a Senator by Appius Claudius, and was elected Curule AEdile by the people.
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