Arunta

“ Similar figures, associated with the mysteries, are, in other parts of Australia, provided with an ample mythology, and are subject to a being more august and remote. But either the Arunta are advanced thinkers who have passed beyond such ideas, or they have not yet attained to them, or our witnesses are uninformed on the subject. [7] In any case, the first-fruits of the game, grubs, and plants of the Arunta are not offered to Twanyirika, or to the minor sprites, Iruntarinia. ”

“ Of course, as we tried to show, that explanation of primeval exogamy is improbable, but it is the explanation given by the Arunta legend. With a grain of fact, as to innovations from the North, the legend is a myth, an ætiological myth, a myth explanatory of the origin of the present organisation. History it is not. The Arunta [Pg 80] 'traditions' are not historical evidence in favour of the new hypothesis that the Arunta are 'primitive,' are in 'the chrysalis stage' of humanity ”

“ Natives of the Banks Islands are far in advance of the Arunta in all the arts of life, as well as in relation to Totemism which they seem to have outlived. Is it admissible to take some trait of their life as an example of what may have existed amongst the Arunta at a stage of culture which is generally assumed to have been inferior even to the present? When the antecedents of an institution have been lost amongst any given people, and we set out to supply them from parallel cases amongst other peoples, must we not require the same relative order of development? ”

“ These spirit children, like the spirits of the tribal ancestors, themselves enter into the women and are borne by them. The Arunta believe that at the death of a person his spirit returns to a special tree or rock, out of which it came, and which is called nandcha. It remains there until it thinks fit once more to enter into a woman, and thus go amongst the living. ”

“ In the hour of evening, under a wintry sky amid whose darkly massed vapours a young moon is peering down upon this maddened world, I wander alone through deserted roadways towards that old solitary brick-tower. Here I stand, and watch the Arno rolling its sullen waves. In Pisa, at such an hour, the Arno is the emblem of Despair. Swollen with melted snow from the mountains, it has gnawed its miserable clay banks and now creeps along, leaden and inert, half solid, like a torrent of liquid mud--irresolute whether to be earth or water ”

“ At two or three points, none the less, this sinister grace exists in perfection--just such perfection as so often proves that what is literally hideous may be constructively delightful and what is intrinsically tragic play on the finest chords of appreciation. On the north side of the Arno, between Ponte Vecchio and Ponte Santa Trinita, is a row of immemorial houses that back on the river, in whose yellow flood they bathe their sore old feet. Anything more battered and befouled, more cracked and disjointed, dirtier, drearier, poorer, it would be impossible to conceive. ”

“ As great rivers go, the Arno is neither grand nor magnificent, but, though its proportions are not great, its banks are lined with historic and artistic ruins, from the old fortress at Marina di Pisa to Poppi, the ancient capital of the Casentino, perched so quaintly upon its river-washed rock. ”

“ It is not vast like Rome, nor is the soul of its beholder saddened by the sight of mighty ruins, or burdened with the weight of thousands of years of heroic history. It does not possess the broad Bay of Naples, nor is it watched over by a stupendous volcano, smoking leisurely for want of some better occupation. But it lies in the valley of the Arno, one of the most harmonious and impressive works of art that the world has ever seen, surrounded by natural beauties that realize the most ecstatic dreams of poesy. ”

“ Now, if you flee from galleries and churches, there is little left you in Florence town but the side of the Arno. This is the one place where all day long the sun shines out in splendour, and you can saunter and dream, and ask yourself with the Misses Leamar, ‘Why is the world so gay to-day?’ You turn away from the Arno at your peril. To enter any side street is, to an Englishman, dangerous in the extreme. The long, narrow streets shut out all sun and all light, and you pass into them from the Lung’ Arno as from the kitchen fire to the ice well. ”

“ After a time, however, the laugh of the giddy Annina rang merrily in one of the vast corridors, where she was flirting with the old Greek chasseur, Andronicus; but only to drive away ennui in the absence of her cavalier Giacomo, whom with his party the visconte had sent back to Crotona.
"There can be nothing amiss, when Annina laughs so joyously," thought I; "and yet this great Italian villa, so gloomy and so silent, looks like a vast catacomb by the evening light. Ola! ”

“ After walking three or four miles, we entered the Appenines, keeping along the side of the Arno, whose bed is more than half dried up from the long summer heats. The mountain sides were covered with vineyards, glowing with their wealth of white and purple grapes, but the summits were naked and barren. We passed through the little town of Ponte Sieve, at the entrance of a romantic valley, where our view of the Arno was made more interesting by the lofty range of the Appenines, amid whose forests we could see the white front of the monastery of Vallombrosa. ”

“ Beautiful for situation; the joy of the whole earth! It has a beauty that grows upon the heart. The Arno is the sweetest of rivers, its valley the loveliest of vales; luxuriant meadows; rich vineyards; groves of olive, of orange, and of chestnut; forests of cypress; long lines of mulberry; the dark purple of the distant Apennines; innumerable white villas peeping through the surrounding groves; the mysterious haze of the sunset, which throws a softer charm over the scene; the magnificent cattle; the fine horses; the bewitching girls, with their broad hats of Tuscan straw ”

“ There is no more dazzling combination of color in the world, and on moonlight nights it is but the exchange of gold for silver.
Ranata, standing on the stone terrace in front of the library and overhanging the sea, her back to the war-ship on the right of the castle, her eyes roaming from the incomparable expanse of the Adriatic to Trieste and the mountains beyond, felt that with knowledge, in addition to the faith that sustained her, she could serenely endure her exile throughout what she believed to be the inevitable [398] months. ”

“ Not a soul came out as we drew up at the bottom of the steps. Not a soul was to be seen except the souls with scythes in the meadow. We waited a moment, thinking to hear a bell rung and to see flying waiters, but no one came. The scythes in the meadow swished, the larks called down that it was a fine evening, some fowls came and pecked about on the sunny steps of the temple, some red sails passed between the trunks of the willows down near the water.
'Shall I go in?' inquired Gertrud. ”

“ One can do a lot—" And there was Bergamo he wanted to show her; she would, he assured her, greatly love Bergamo; and certainly they would go to Pavia if only to see if the wistaria were still in flower.
Her eyes danced. The sight of the map and the time-table was enough. She hung over him eagerly, following his pointing finger as it moved over mountains and lakes. She was like a schoolboy watching the planning out of his first trip abroad. There was no room in her for any thoughts but thoughts of glee. The names were music to her—Locarno, Cannobio, Luino, Varese, Bergamo, Brescia, Venice. ”

“ The north end framed the sky and fields and distant church; the south end had a picture of luminous water shining through beech leaves; the pair of columns in front enclosed the chestnut-lined road we had come along and the outermost white houses of Putbus among dark trees against the sunset on high ground behind; through those on the left was the sea, hardly sea here at all the bay is so sheltered, and hardly salt at all, for grass and rushes, touched just then by the splendour of light into a transient divine brightness, lay all along the shore. ”

“ For twenty miles or more after the remotest headwaters of the Arno have united to form a considerable stream, this river flows south-eastwards to the vicinity of Arezzo. It here sweeps round to the north-west, and follows that course to near its junction with the Sieve, a few miles above Florence, from which point its general direction is westward to the sea. From the bend at Arezzo, a depression called the Val di Chiana runs south-eastwards until it strikes into the valley of the Paglia, a tributary of the Tiber, and thus connects the basin of the latter river with that of the Arno. ”

“ The Val d’Arno to our left looks like an enormous bay which has spread by some convulsion of nature into a vast inland sea, but instead of the masts of ships riding at anchor, in that broad expanse are the spires and towers of countless villages. ”

“ Arundel—she kept on forgetting that he wasn’t Mr. Arundel—was already, his arm through Rose’s, going off with her, probably to the greater seclusion of the lower garden. No doubt they had a great deal to say to each other; something had gone wrong between them, and had suddenly been put right. San Salvatore, Lotty would say, San Salvatore working its spell of happiness. She could quite believe in its spell. Even she was happier there than she had been for ages and ages. The only person who would go empty away would be Mr. Briggs. ”

“ The Arno, as described by the Tuscan poets, for I have never seen it, must bear a strong resemblance to the Loire from Ancennis to Angers; nothing can be more beautiful than the natural distribution of lawn, wood, hill and valley, whilst the river, which borders this scenery, is ever giving it a new form by its serpentine shape. ”

“ As by miracle they announced a visitor: one Annina, a girl of the town. Would her Majesty see her?
Ah, Heaven! but her Majesty would! In came, staring and breathing hard, a brown-eyed girl with a shawl over her head, below it a blue stuff gown, below all a pair of sturdy bare legs. "Corpaccio! that's a lady; that's never my 'Polita," she stammered when she saw the white silk wonder of the room, the jewels in her neck, the chains of gold, the bosom.
"Oh, Annina! Annina! it is, it is your poor Ippolita," panted the beauty, and fell into the red arms of her friend. ”

“ The two valleys of the Arno and the Tiber (Ital. Tevere) may be considered as furnishing the key to the geography of all this portion of Italy west of the Apennines. The Arno, which has its source in the Monte Falterona, one of the most elevated summits of the main chain of the Tuscan Apennines, flows nearly south till in the neighbourhood of Arezzo it turns abruptly north-west, and pursues that course as far as Pontassieve, where it again makes a sudden bend to the west, and pursues a westerly course thence to the sea, passing through Florence and Pisa. ”

“ The river here was hemmed into a narrow ravine, and crossing by an ancient bridge of three spans, supposed to have been built by the Romans, we climbed up the steep ascent that led to Narni, and there found food and lodging for both man and beast, at an albergo, the name of which, somehow, I have forgotten. St. Armande was quite worn out, and I saw he was unfitted for any long strain. We supped together, and he retired almost at once. After supper I had a detailed examination of the horses, and found that one of them had a sore back. ”

“ Who are you?’ exclaimed the sick man. ‘Who is here, Unnas?’
‘Annita,’ said she softly.
‘Annita!’ exclaimed the sick man. ‘Unnas,’ he shouted, [85] ‘where am I? am I dead or alive? and who is this who is speaking to me?’
‘Theodore,’ whispered Annita, while she knelt down by his bed and kissed his forehead, ‘I am Annita—your own Annita—the lost Annita; and God be for ever praised that you are alive, and that I have found you.’
The sick man lay perfectly still for a moment, altogether overcome by his feelings. ”

“ It is into no flat expanse of water that the dying sun sinks here. The peaks and crags of Arran invest its passage with an indescribable pomp and majesty, standing out against it like the massive pillars of some giant gateway of the West. It is never twice the same. Sometimes lurid and blazing, with masses of thunder-cloud piled high, all their outer edges rimmed with fire ”

“ ARTENA, a village of Italy, in the province of Rome, situated at the N.N.W. extremity of the Volscian Mountains; it is 36 m. S.E. by rail, and 24 m. direct from Rome. Pop. (1901) 5016. On the mountain above it (2073 ft.) are the fine remains of the fortifications of a city built in a very primitive style, in cyclopean blocks of local limestone; within the walls are traces of buildings, and a massive terrace which supported some edifice of importance. ”

“ As Ranata carried a lighted taper in her own hand, she motioned to him to walk behind her, and picked her way on the uneven stones worn by four centuries of men and women who had gone down with the dead, or to pray among the ruins of those [353] who had ruled and loved and oppressed, or battled in secret and impotence with the wretched comedy of their existence. Twice before—since her early girlhood, when her tutor in history had included an occasional visit to the Hapsburg dust in his course—had Ranata descended this stair: behind the coffin of Rudolf, and the coffin of her mother. ”