What road could it be? To this day I do not know.
Perhaps I had missed my way and struck the main highway again. Perhaps
(it is often so in the Apennines) it was a road leading nowhere. At
any rate I hesitated, and looked back to judge my direction.
It was a happy accident. I was now some 2000 feet above the Taro.
There, before me, stood the high strange rock that I had watched from
below; all around it and below me was the glen or cup of bare hills,
slabs, and slopes of sand and stone calcined in the sun, and, beyond
these near things, all the plain of Lombardy was at my feet.
It was this which made it worth while to have toiled up that steep
wall, and even to have lost my way - to see a hundred miles of the
great flat stretched out before me: all the kingdoms of the world.
Nor was this all. There were sharp white clouds on the far northern
horizon, low down above the uncertain edge of the world. I looked
again and found they did not move. Then I knew they were the Alps.
Believe it or not, I was looking back to a place of days before: over
how many, many miles of road!
