is the dike which contains the sulkily torpid but yet dangerous
Montone.

Gradually, as the traveller proceeds, the scene grows worse and
worse. Soon the only kind of cultivation to be seen from the road
consists of rice-grounds, looking like--what in truth they are--
poisonous swamps. Then come swamps pure and simple, too bad even to
be turned into rice grounds,--or rather simply swamps impure; for a
stench at most times of the year comes from them, like a warning of
their pestilential nature, and their unfitness for the sojourn of
man. A few shaggy, wild-looking cattle may be seen wandering over
the flat waste, muddy to the shoulders from wading in the soft
swamps. A scene of more utter desolation it is hardly possible to
meet with in such close neighbourhood to a living city.

Paolina shivered, and drew her little grey cloak more closely around
her shoulders; not from cold, though a bleak wind was blowing across
the marshes. She was warmed by walking; but the aspect of the scene
before her almost frightened the Venetian girl by the savagery of
its desolation.

The raised causeway, however, keeps on its course amid the low-lying
marshes on either side of it; and presently the peculiar form of
outline belonging to a forest composed entirely of the maritime pine
is distinguishable on the horizon to the left. The road quickly
draws nearer to it; and the large, heavy, velvet-like masses of dark
verdure become visible. In a forest such as the famous Pineta,
consisting of the maritime pine only, the lines, especially when
seen at a distance, have more of horizontal and less of
perpendicular direction than in any other assemblage of trees. And