OLD FATHER TIBER.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20420, 23 November 1929, Page 10

OLD FATHER TIBER.

TRIP, IN RUBBER CANOE*

SETTLING DISPUTED POINT.

Three young men whose Dames are given as Harold Ebe.rlein, of London and Philadelphia, Frank Wallis, of NewYork, and Geoffrey Marks,. of London, have been navigating the Tiber in a rubber canoe—sis feet long by two feet wide —from Ponte S. Giovanni, hear P-jrugia, to the river-port of Ponte Margherita at Rome.

They made the attempt in order to ascertain if it was really true that the Tiber is not navigable above Orte, as they had been told. Their greatest difficulties were encountered below Todi at a place called II Forello, where the river flows through a narrow mountain pass, and its level is varied by cascades. This point was described to them as so dangerous that no boat had ever been able to get through it, and an attempt made last year ended in the death of one boatman, while the other was only rescued by, strenuous efforts.

The Tiber being recently low, the three men had to guide their canoe very carefully through rocks and stones, and they, said that only a flat-bottomed rubber boatl could possibly have conic through. They are prepared on the whole to endorse the opinion of thq local population that the Tiber is not navigable above Orte. Their experience has given them material for a book, "Down the Tiber to Rome,'* which they are preparing for publication,!