Apennine Mountains

“ Where it forms an elbow, touching the Mediterranean, as a smaller circle touches a larger, within which it is inscribed, in the manner of a tangent, the name changes from Alps to Apennine. It is the beginning of the Apennine which constitutes the State of Genoa, the mountains there generally falling down in barren naked precipices into the sea. Wherever there is soil on the lower parts, it is principally in olives and figs, in vines also, mulberries, and corn. Where there are hollows well protected, there are oranges. ”

“ There is not one long chain, like the Pyrenees or the Apennines, of a general average height and form, but innumerable peaks, sharp and pointed, as if piercing the sky, while other summits are broad and dome-like, as if the very heavens might rest on the support of such "everlasting hills." And these mountains are unlike those of other countries in being more barren and desolate. I have seen mountains in all parts of the world, and have found in almost every case that they had some feature of beauty mingled with their ruggedness, which took away somewhat of their desolate character. ”

“ The peaks in succession glistened in the sunlight.
Then I turned westward from Copernicus to the huge chains of the lunar Apennines, which recalled to my mind, more than anything else I had seen since I had left Trehyndra, the memory of the mountains of the earth. Long lines of peaks with narrow gorges, with lines of awful precipices, such as you cannot imagine. Some of the peaks were as lofty as Mont Blanc. ”

“ Many windings are occasioned by thus adhering to arêtes, but the total result is a gradual ascent with free prospect over plain and mountain. The Apennines, built up upon a smaller scale than the Alps, perplexed in detail and entangled with cross sections and convergent systems, lend themselves to this plan of carrying highroads along their ridges instead of following the valley.
What is beautiful in the landscape of that northern watershed is the subtlety, delicacy, variety, and intricacy of the mountain outlines. There is drawing wherever the eye falls. ”

“ I found it much the same on returning; for barren rocks and mountains undergo little alteration either in summer or winter. Indeed, of the two, I prefer the effect in the most dreary season, for it is then most complete and consistent with itself: on some kinds of scenery, as on some characters, any attempt at the gay and pleasing sits ill, and is a mere piece of affectation. There is so far a distinction between the Apennines and Alps, that the latter are often covered with woods, and with patches of the richest verdure, and are capable of all the gloom of winter or the bloom of spring. ”

“ A dull purple poisonous haze stretches level along the desert, veiling its spectral wrecks of massy ruins, on whose rents the red light rests, like dying fire on defiled altars; the blue ridge of the Alban Mount lifts itself against a solemn space of green, clear, quiet sky. Watch-towers of dark clouds stand steadfastly along the promontories of the Apennines. From the plain to the mountains, the shattered aqueducts, pier beyond pier, melt into the darkness, like shadowy and countless troops of funeral mourners, passing from a nation's grave. ”

“ The lofty hills that form the outer extremity of the spurs diverging from the Great Atlas slope rather steeply towards the plain, while the torrent issues from them through a cleft so narrow that no path is carried along it into the valley. Trees, that naturally clothe the outer ranges of the Alps, are here very scarce, and the upper declivity, as commonly in the Apennine, is covered with brushwood and low shrubs; while the lower slopes are partly under tillage, or else planted with olive and fig trees. ”

“ Or like the sea on a northern shore,
Heard in its raging ebb and flow
By the captives pent in the cave below.
The Apennine in the light of day
Is a mighty mountain dim and gray,
Which between the earth and sky doth lay ”

“ Snow lies on the highest peaks of the Apennines for almost the whole year. The range produces no minerals, but there are a considerable number of good mineral springs, some of which are thermal (such as Bagni di Lucca, Monte Catini, Monsummano, Porretta, Telese, &c.) , while others are cool (such as Nocera, Sangemini, Cinciano, &c.) , the water of which is both drunk on the spot and sold as table water elsewhere. (T. As.)
Geology.—The Apennines are the continuation of the Alpine chain, but the individual zones of the Alps cannot be traced into the Apennines. ”

“ The Sub-Apennine hills to the south of the Arno are of rounded contours, of a gloomy grey colour, and devoid of all verdure. Whilst the Apennines consist exclusively of Jurassic and cretaceous rocks, the Sub-Apennines are of tertiary formation, their sandstones, clays, marls, and pudding-stones being pierced here and there by serpentine. Well-defined ranges can hardly be said to exist. ”

“ The most prominent mountains on the moon are the Apennines. These extend in a continuous curve for 450 miles a little north of the center of the moon, forming an impressive "shoreline" for Mare Imbrium, the "Sea of Showers." Running northward, just above the Apennines, is the Caucasus range, and east of the Caucasus, lie the Alps. The Alps and Caucasus [Pg 303] mountains are far less conspicuous than the Apennines, for not only do these latter mountains reach into a higher altitude but they also are crowned along their 450 miles with some 3000 steep and rugged peaks. ”

“ What made the prospect all the more delightful was that, beyond these fertile hills, we could distinguish the rugged and inaccessible summits of the Apennines, and the torrents descending therefrom, which, when they have lost their primal impulse, come down into the valleys as gracious and gentle brooks. While traversing these hills we could see, both on the heights and down below, many fertile level fields, some of them wider than the eye could cover on account of a slight slope in the distance, the landscape being of a beauty and richness beyond the power of a painter to imitate. ”

“ Beyond these rich masses of foliage, to which the sun lent additional splendour, at the utmost extremity of the pastures, rose the irregular ridge of the Apennines, whose deep blue presented a striking contrast to the glowing colours of the foreground. I fixed my eyes on the chain of distant mountains, and indulged, as usual, my conjectures of what was going forward on their summits; of those who tended goats on the edge of the precipice; traversed, at this moment, the dark thickets of pines, and passed their lives in yonder sheds, contented and unknown. ”

“ The upper portion of our illustration is occupied by the magnificent range of volcanic mountains named after our Apennines, extending to a length of upwards of 450 miles. This mountain group rises gradually from a comparatively level surface towards the south-west, in the form of innumerable comparatively small mountains of exudation, which increase in number and altitude towards the north-east, where they culminate and suddenly terminate in a sublime range of peaks, whose altitude and rugged aspect must form one of the most terribly grand and romantic scenes which imagination can conceive. ”

“ These remnants lie at a comparatively low level, and excepting the Apuan Alps and the Calabrian peninsula they do not now form any part of the Apennine chain. But that in Tertiary times there was a high interior zone of crystalline rocks is indicated by the character of the Eocene beds in the southern Apennines. These are formed to a large extent of thick conglomerates which are full of pebbles and boulders of granite and schist. Many of the boulders are of considerable size and they are often still angular. ”

“ Unlike bolder types of mountains, these Apennines are fretted all over with a delicate tracery of faint furrows that wander waywardly, and of watercourses that rise slenderly above to grow into large ravines and gashes below. Nature is warm and gracious here, but not wanton with luxuriance, [142] as in the more tropical beauty which I had just left; the country is not a wild country because the hand of man has rested on it all to put cultivation within its valleys, and even upon its hill-sides ”

“ From above the rains and snows and winds are chiselling away its rocks and bearing them to the plains. In time the process of pushing up ceases; the process of grinding down goes on remorselessly, never pausing for a moment.
So the mountains are eternal only in the figurative sense. Actually their term of existence is strictly finite. Once the Australian Alps had their tremendous peaks, and hills of unmelting ice. To-day they have been ground down to below the line of perpetual snow, and along the gentle grades of the chief peak it is possible to drive a carriage to the very summit. ”

“ Most of these contrasts are due to the Apennines, which branch off from the southern extremity of the French Alps. At first they run close to the seashore, like a huge wall supported at intervals by powerful buttresses; subsequently they traverse the whole of the peninsula. At times they are reduced to a narrow ridge, at others they spread out into vast masses, rising in plateaux or ramifying into chains and promontories. River valleys and plains intersect them in all directions; lakes and filled-up lake basins are spread out at the foot of their cliffs ”

“ For those with means and time sufficient to indulge their love of climbing among the great Alps, the old snow ways of the mountains still remain sufficient in number and in sensation. But for the ever-increasing number of men whom circumstances limited to the lesser hills of our own islands or to the lower alpine ranges, the grass and snow ways began to prove too unexciting as their novelty became exhausted, and the rock peaks and the sheer rock faces of the Lake Fells, Skye or the Dolomites offered a new temptation. ”

“ The Alps separate Italy on the north and northwest from the rest of Europe. The pass over these mountains which presents the least difficulties is through the Julian Alps on the east. It was over this pass that the Barbarians swept down in their invasions of the country. The Apennines, which are a continuation of the Alps, extend through the whole of the peninsula. Starting in the Maritime Alps, they extend easterly towards the Adriatic coast, and turn southeasterly hugging the coast through its whole extent. ”

“ The inclined strata A are the disturbed formations of the Apennines, into which the ancient igneous rocks a are supposed to have intruded themselves. At a lower level on each flank of the chain are the more recent shelly beds b b, which often contain rounded pebbles derived from the waste of contiguous parts of the older Apennine limestone. These, it will be seen, are horizontal, and lie in what is termed "unconformable stratification" on the more ancient series. ”

“ Between the Alps and the Apennines lies the extensive, fertile plain of Lombardy, watered by the river Po, and containing several large lakes, such as Garda, Como, and Maggiore. The Apennines form a very picturesque chain of mountains 5000 ft. high down the centre of the country. The climate varies in different districts, but is mostly warm. Malaria curses many parts in autumn. ”

“ Stimulating to the fancy as was that range of low hills to the northwards, already troubled with the upbreaking of the Apennines, yet a want of quiet in their outline, the record of wild fracture there, of sudden upheaval and depression, marked them as but the ruins of nature; while at every little descent and ascent of the road might be noted traces of the abandoned work of man. ”

“ The mountains continued to increase in height; they were more and more naked and sterile; their colour was whitish-grey, grey-brown, often spotted with white, the upper part disposed in horizontal strata, or in narrow stripes; and some isolated summits rose in the most grotesque forms, and the general appearance reminded me of the calcareous mountains of Appenzell, in Switzerland. In the steep wall of the south bank we saw, at a great height, the antlers of a stag projecting, which must have been imbedded in the alluvium, which was now washed away by the river. ”

“ It affords a contrast of the elements of the grandest conception to stand in the shade of some wavy verdure of the valley wiping off the unbidden perspiration from the brow, and, at the same instant, look upon a darkly threatening storm-cloud powdering the heads of the hoary monster mountains from its freight of flaky snow. So far these American giant mountains are unsurpassed by their Alpine neighbors of Europe. Not so in the glaciers. Throughout the great range, there are none of those beautiful glaciers to be found that can compare with those possessed by their compeers in Europe. ”

“ Though not high, as heights go in the European Alps or in the Himalaya, they are imposing mountains. It is only within comparatively recent years that passes have been discovered between the lakes and the sounds; and although these passes do not lead the traveller beyond the sub-Alpine heights, they take him through scenery that is no less remarkable for its beauty than for its grandeur—a fitting introduction to those greater marvels in the heart of the Southern Alps. ”

“ Travellers have learned by experience, that views from the summits of very lofty mountains are neither so beautiful, picturesque, nor so varied, as those from heights which do not exceed that of Vesuvius, Righi, and the Puy-de-Dome. Colossal mountains, such as Chimborazo, Antisana, or Mount Rosa, compose so large a mass, that the plains covered with rich vegetation are seen only in the immensity of distance, and a blue and vapoury tint is uniformly spread over the landscape. ”