Seem to be mud
when one saw how the moistening soil showed cracks from the last day's
heat.
Lombardy has no forests, but any amount of groups of trees; moreover
(what is very remarkable), it is all cultivated in fields more or less
square. These fields have ditches round them, full of mud and water
running slowly, and some of them are themselves under water in order
to cultivate rice. All these fields have a few trees bordering them,
apart from the standing clumps; but these trees are not very high.
There are no open views in Lombardy, and Lombardy is all the same.
Irregular large farmsteads stand at random all up and down the
country; no square mile of Lombardy is empty. There are many, many
little villages; many straggling small towns about seven to eight
miles apart, and a great number of large towns from thirty to fifty
miles apart. Indeed, this very road to Piacenza, which the rain now
covered with a veil of despair, was among the longest stretches
between any two large towns, although it was less than fifty miles.
On the map, before coming to this desolate place, there seemed a
straighter and a better way to Rome than this great road. There is a
river called the Lambro, which comes east of Milan and cuts the
Piacenzan road at a place called Melegnano. It seemed to lead straight
down to a point on the Po, a little above Piacenza. This stream one
could follow (so it seemed), and when it joined the Po get a boat or
ferry, and see on the other side the famous Trebbia, where Hannibal
conquered and Joubert fell, and so make straight on for the Apennine.
Since it is always said in books that Lombardy is a furnace in summer,
and that whole great armies have died of the heat there, this river
bank would make a fine refuge. Clear and delicious water, more limpid
than glass, would reflect and echo the restless poplars, and would
make tolerable or even pleasing the excessive summer. Not so. It was a
northern mind judging by northern things that came to this conclusion.
There is not in all Lombardy a clear stream, but every river and brook
is rolling mud. In the rain, not heat, but a damp and penetrating
chill was the danger. There is no walking on the banks of the rivers;
they are cliffs of crumbling soil, jumbled anyhow.
Man may, as Pinkerton (Sir Jonas Pinkerton) writes, be master of his
fate, but he has a precious poor servant. It is easier to command a
lapdog or a mule for a whole day than one's own fate for half-an-hour.
Nevertheless, though it was apparent that I should have to follow the
main road for a while, I determined to make at last to the right of
it, and to pass through a place called 'Old Lodi', for I reasoned
thus:
