When We Emerged From The Suburbs Upon The Open Campagna, We Passed
Through Many Fields Of Wheat, More Than We Had Yet Seen On The Grassy
Waste, But There Were Also Many Flocks Of Sheep Feeding With The Cattle
In Pastures.
Now and then we passed a wretched hut which seemed to be
the dwelling of the shepherds we saw
Tending the flocks, and here and
there we came upon a group of farm buildings, all of straw, whether for
man or beast, set within a sort of squalid court, with a frowzy
suggestion of old women and children about the doors of the cottages. We
saw no men, though there must have been men off at work in the fields
with the younger women.
As we drew near Civita Vecchia the sea widened on our view, wild with a
wind that seemed to have been blowing ever since the stormy evening in
1865 when, after looking at the tossing ships in the harbor, we decided
to take the diligence for Leghorn, rather than the little steamer we had
meant to take. From our pleasant train we now patronized Civita Vecchia
with a recognition of its picturesqueness, unvexed by the choice that
then insisted on itself, though the harbor was as full of shipping as of
old. There was time to run out for a cup of coffee at the station
buffet, where there had been neither station nor buffet in our young
time: but doubtless then as now there had been the lonely graveyard
outside the town, with its sea-beaten, seaward wall.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 281 of 353
Words from 77073 to 77336
of 97259
