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.
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