view, but majestic and isolated, thirty miles away to the north. But
here, as in every other part of the Campagna, one cannot go far without
finding hillocks and hollows, long steep slopes and sudden little dells,
and, stranger still, unsuspected tracts of woodland, for the general
effect of the Roman landscape is quite treeless. So there is a few
miles' gallop across the trackless turf, sometimes asking the way of a
solitary shepherd, who looms up against the sky like a tower, sometimes
following it by faint landmarks, few and far between, of which we have
been told, and hard to find in that waste, until we pass a curious
little patriarchal abode shaped like a wigwam, where, in the midst of
these wide pastures dwells a herdsman surrounded by his family, his
cattle, his dogs, his goats and his fowls--the beautiful animals of the
Campagna, long-haired, soft-eyed, rich-colored, like the human children
of the soil. Then we strike the Cremera, and exploring begins among its
rocky gullies, up and down which the spirited, sure-footed horses
scramble like chamois. Thick woods of cork-oak clothe their sides, and
copses of a deciduous tree which I never saw in its summer dress of
green, but which keeps its dead leaves all through the winter, a full
suit of soft, pale brown contrasting with the dark evergreens. Among
these woods grow all the wild-flowers of the long Roman spring from
January to May--flowers that I never saw in bloom at the same time
anywhere else. On banks overcanopied by faded boughs nodded myriads of
snowdrops; farther on we held our horses' heads well up as they slipped,
almost sitting, down the damp rocky clefts of a gorge whose sides were
purple with violets, mingling their delicious odor, the sweetest and
most sentimental of perfumes, with the fresh, geranium-like scent of the
cyclamen, which here and there flung back its delicate pinkish petals
like one amazed: then came acres of anemones--not our pale wind-shaken
flower, but brave asters of half a dozen superb kinds. Up and down these
passes we forced our way through interlacing branches, which drooped too