A
Delectable Path, For Example, Runs Up Behind The Cemetery, Bordered By
Butterfly Orchids And Lithospermum And Aristolochia And Other Plants
Worthy Of Better Names; It Winds Aloft, Under Shady Chestnuts, With
Views On Either Side.
Here one can sit and smoke and converse with some
rare countryman passing by; here one can dream, forgetful of
nightingales - soothed, rather, by the mellifluous note of the oriole
among the green branches overhead and the piping, agreeably remote, of
some wryneck in the olives down yonder.
The birds are having a quiet
time, for the first time in their lives; sportsmen are all at the front.
I kicked up a partridge along this track two days ago.
Those wrynecks, by the way, are abundant but hard to see. They sit
close, relying on their protective colour. And it is the same with the
tree-creepers. I have heard Englishmen say there are no tree-creepers in
Italy. The olive groves are well stocked with them (there are numbers
even in the Borghese Gardens in Rome), but you must remain immovable as
a rock in order to see them; for they are yet shyer, more silent, more
fond of interposing the tree-trunk between yourself and them, than those
at home. Mouse-like in hue, in movement and voice - a strange case of
analogous variation....
As to this Scalambra, this mountain whose bleak grey summit overtops
everything near Olevano, I could soon bear the sight of it no longer. It
seemed to shut out the world; one must up and glance over the edge, to
see what is happening on the other side. I looked for a guide and
porter, for somebody more solid than Giulio, who is almost an infant;
none could be found. Men are growing scarce as the Dodo hereabouts, on
account of the war. So Giulio came, though he had never made the ascent.
Now common sense, to say nothing of a glance at the map, would suggest
the proper method of approach: by the village of Serrano, the Saint
Michael hermitage, and so up. Scouting this plan, I attacked the
mountain about half-way between that village and Rojate. I cannot
recommend my route. It was wearisome to the last degree and absolutely
shadeless save for a small piece of jungle clothing a gulley, hung with
myriads of caterpillars and not worth mentioning as an incident in that
long walk. No excitement - not the faintest chance, so far as I could
see, of breaking one's neck, and uphill all the time over limestone. One
never seems to get any nearer. This Scalambra, I soon discovered, is one
of those artful mountains which defend their summits by thrusting out
escarpments with valleys in between; you are kept at arm's length, as it
were, by this arrangement of the rock, which is invisible at a distance.
And when at last you set foot on the real ridge and climb laboriously to
what seems to be the top - lo! there is another peak a little further
off, obviously a few feet higher.
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