The
Old Fresco Was Preserved." The Old Gentleman Looked A Little
Scared.
"Oh," said he, "I know nothing about art - but I will see
you again at the hotel;" and left me at once.
I never saw him
again. Who he was, where he came from, how he departed, I do not
know. He was the only Englishman I saw during my stay of some four
weeks at Mesocco.
On the first day of my first visit to Mesocco in 1879, I had gone
on to S. Bernardino, and just before getting there, looking down
over the great stretches of pasture land above S. Giacomo, could
see that there was a storm raging lower down in the valley about
where Mesocco should be; I never saw such inky blackness in clouds
before, and the conductor of the diligence said that he had seen
nothing like it. Next morning we learnt that a water-spout had
burst on the mountain above Anzone, a hamlet of Mesocco, and that
the water had done a great deal of damage to the convent at
Mesocco. Returning a few days later, I saw where the torrent had
flowed by the mud upon the grass, but could not have believed such
a stream of water (running with the velocity with which it must
have run) to have been possible under any circumstances in that
place unless I had actually seen its traces. It carried great
rocks of several cubic yards as though they had been small stones,
and among other mischief it had knocked down the garden wall of the
convent of S. Rocco and covered the garden with debris.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 192 of 279
Words from 51249 to 51522
of 75076
