Do you think any amount of law or energy could drain this fever-stricken plain into the sea?
I do not.

Do you think that if I could be persuaded that the land could be improved into fertility I would hesitate, at any expenditure in my power, to reclaim the miles of desert my father and I own here?
The plain is a series of swamps and stone quarries.

In one place you find the rock a foot below the surface, and the soil burns up in summer; a hundred yards farther you find a bog hundreds of feet deep, which even in summer is never dry." "But," suggested Del Ferice, who listened patiently enough, "supposing the Government passed a law forcing all of you proprietors to plant trees and dig ditches, it would have some effect." "The law cannot force us to sacrifice men's lives.

The Trappist monks at the Tre Fontane are trying it, and dying by scores.

Do you think I, or any other Roman, would send peasants to such a place, or could induce them to go ?" "Well, it is one of a great many questions which will be settled some day," said Del Fence.