We Buried There The
Last Of Our Roman Holidays Under A Sky That Had Changed From Blue To
Gray Since Our Journey Began, And Mournfully Set Out Faces Northward In
The Malarial Maremma.
If the Maremma is as malarial as it is famed, it does not look it.
There
were stretches of hopeless morass, with wide acreages under water, but
mostly, I should say, it was rather a hilly country. Now and then we ran
by a stony old town on a distant summit like the outcropping of granite
or marble, and there were frequent breadths of woodland, oak and pine
and, I dare say, walnut and chestnut. Evidently there had been efforts
to reclaim the Maremma from its evil air and make it safely habitable,
and the farther we penetrated it the more frequent the evidences were.
There were many new buildings of a good sort, and of wood as well as
stone; when we came to Grosetto, where we had spent a memorable night
after being overturned in the Ombrone, in the attempt of our diligence
to pass its flood, we were aware, in the evening light, of a prosperity
which, if not excessive for the twoscore years that had passed, was
still very noticeable. I should not quite say that the brick wall of the
city had been scraped and scrubbed, but it looked very neat and new,
and there was a pleasant suburb under it where the moat might have been,
and people were coming and going who had almost the effect of commuters;
at least, they seemed to have come out to their homes by trolley.
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