So That We
Looked With Positive Awe At A Great Morass On The Left, And Saw
That There Was Not A Bush Or Twig To Hold By.
It seemed as if,
once blown from our feet, we must be swept out to sea, or away into
space.
There was snow, and hail, and rain, and lightning, and
thunder; and there were rolling mists, travelling with incredible
velocity. It was dark, awful, and solitary to the last degree;
there were mountains above mountains, veiled in angry clouds; and
there was such a wrathful, rapid, violent, tumultuous hurry,
everywhere, as rendered the scene unspeakably exciting and grand.
It was a relief to get out of it, notwithstanding; and to cross
even the dismal, dirty Papal Frontier. After passing through two
little towns; in one of which, Acquapendente, there was also a
'Carnival' in progress: consisting of one man dressed and masked
as a woman, and one woman dressed and masked as a man, walking
ankle-deep, through the muddy streets, in a very melancholy manner:
we came, at dusk, within sight of the Lake of Bolsena, on whose
bank there is a little town of the same name, much celebrated for
malaria. With the exception of this poor place, there is not a
cottage on the banks of the lake, or near it (for nobody dare sleep
there); not a boat upon its waters; not a stick or stake to break
the dismal monotony of seven-and-twenty watery miles. We were late
in getting in, the roads being very bad from heavy rains; and,
after dark, the dulness of the scene was quite intolerable.
We entered on a very different, and a finer scene of desolation,
next night, at sunset. We had passed through Montefiaschone
(famous for its wine) and Viterbo (for its fountains): and after
climbing up a long hill of eight or ten miles' extent, came
suddenly upon the margin of a solitary lake: in one part very
beautiful, with a luxuriant wood; in another, very barren, and shut
in by bleak volcanic hills. Where this lake flows, there stood, of
old, a city. It was swallowed up one day; and in its stead, this
water rose. There are ancient traditions (common to many parts of
the world) of the ruined city having been seen below, when the
water was clear; but however that may be, from this spot of earth
it vanished. The ground came bubbling up above it; and the water
too; and here they stand, like ghosts on whom the other world
closed suddenly, and who have no means of getting back again. They
seem to be waiting the course of ages, for the next earthquake in
that place; when they will plunge below the ground, at its first
yawning, and be seen no more. The unhappy city below, is not more
lost and dreary, than these fire-charred hills and the stagnant
water, above. The red sun looked strangely on them, as with the
knowledge that they were made for caverns and darkness; and the
melancholy water oozed and sucked the mud, and crept quietly among
the marshy grass and reeds, as if the overthrow of all the ancient
towers and housetops, and the death of all the ancient people born
and bred there, were yet heavy on its conscience.
A short ride from this lake, brought us to Ronciglione; a little
town like a large pig-sty, where we passed the night. Next morning
at seven o'clock, we started for Rome.
As soon as we were out of the pig-sty, we entered on the Campagna
Romana; an undulating flat (as you know), where few people can
live; and where, for miles and miles, there is nothing to relieve
the terrible monotony and gloom. Of all kinds of country that
could, by possibility, lie outside the gates of Rome, this is the
aptest and fittest burial-ground for the Dead City. So sad, so
quiet, so sullen; so secret in its covering up of great masses of
ruin, and hiding them; so like the waste places into which the men
possessed with devils used to go and howl, and rend themselves, in
the old days of Jerusalem. We had to traverse thirty miles of this
Campagna; and for two-and-twenty we went on and on, seeing nothing
but now and then a lonely house, or a villainous-looking shepherd:
with matted hair all over his face, and himself wrapped to the chin
in a frowsy brown mantle, tending his sheep. At the end of that
distance, we stopped to refresh the horses, and to get some lunch,
in a common malaria-shaken, despondent little public-house, whose
every inch of wall and beam, inside, was (according to custom)
painted and decorated in a way so miserable that every room looked
like the wrong side of another room, and, with its wretched
imitation of drapery, and lop-sided little daubs of lyres, seemed
to have been plundered from behind the scenes of some travelling
circus.
When we were fairly going off again, we began, in a perfect fever,
to strain our eyes for Rome; and when, after another mile or two,
the Eternal City appeared, at length, in the distance; it looked
like--I am half afraid to write the word--like LONDON!!! There it
lay, under a thick cloud, with innumerable towers, and steeples,
and roofs of houses, rising up into the sky, and high above them
all, one Dome. I swear, that keenly as I felt the seeming
absurdity of the comparison, it was so like London, at that
distance, that if you could have shown it me, in a glass, I should
have taken it for nothing else.
CHAPTER X--ROME
We entered the Eternal City, at about four o'clock in the
afternoon, on the thirtieth of January, by the Porta del Popolo,
and came immediately--it was a dark, muddy day, and there had been
heavy rain--on the skirts of the Carnival.
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