The town lay on its hill in the pale but growing light. A great dome
gave it dignity, and a castle overlooked the lake. It was built upon
the very edge and lip of the volcano-cup commanding either side.
I climbed up this sunken lane towards it, not knowing what might be
beyond, when, at the crest, there shone before me in the sunrise one
of those unexpected and united landscapes which are among the glories
of Italy. They have changed the very mind in a hundred northern
painters, when men travelled hither to Rome to learn their art, and
coming in by her mountain roads saw, time and again, the set views of
plains like gardens, surrounded by sharp mountain-land and framed.
The road did not pass through the town; the grand though crumbling
gate of entry lay up a short straight way to the right, and below,
where the road continued down the slope, was a level of some eight
miles full of trees diminishing in distance. At its further side an
ample mountain, wooded, of gentle flattened outline, but high and
majestic, barred the way to Rome. It was yet another of those
volcanoes, fruitful after death, which are the mark of Latium: and it
held hidden, as did that larger and more confused one on the rim of
which I stood, a lake in its silent crater. But that lake, as I was to
find, was far smaller than the glittering sea of Bolsena, whose shores
now lay behind me.
The distance and the hill that bounded it should in that climate have
stood clear in the pure air, but it was yet so early that a thin haze
hung over the earth, and the sun had not yet controlled it: it was
even chilly. I could not catch the towers of Viterbo, though I knew
them to stand at the foot of the far mountain. I went down the road,
and in half-an-hour or so was engaged upon the straight line crossing
the plain.
I wondered a little how the road would lie with regard to the town,
and looked at my map for guidance, but it told me little. It was too
general, taking in all central Italy, and even large places were
marked only by small circles.
When I approached Viterbo I first saw an astonishing wall,
perpendicular to my road, untouched, the bones of the Middle Ages. It
stood up straight before one like a range of cliffs, seeming much
higher than it should; its hundred feet or so were exaggerated by the
severity of its stones and by their sheer fall. For they had no
ornament whatever, and few marks of decay, though many of age. Tall
towers, exactly square and equally bare of carving or machicolation,
stood at intervals along this forbidding defence and flanked its
curtain.
