The Waters of Edera

The river Edera runs through bucolic farmland outside of Rome. When a plan arises to dam the river for a hydroelectric plant, the local farmers and peasants violently resist. It was a country of wide pastures, of moors covered with heath, of rock-born streams and rivulets, of forest and hill and dale, sparsely inhabited, with the sea to the eastward of it, unseen, and the mountains everywhere visible always, and endlessly changing in aspect.