Terracina

“ The evening of the day we left this surprising city was spent out of its king’s dominions, at Terracina, which now affords one of the best inns in Italy; it is kept by a Frenchman, whose price, though high, is regulated, whose behaviour is agreeable, and whose suppers and beds are delightful. Near the spot where his house now stands, there was in ancient Pagan days a temple, erected to the memory of the beardless Jupiter called Anxurus, of which Pausanias, and I believe Scaliger too, take notice ”

“ The fine white buildings on the heights, the temple of Jupiter Anxurus (of which the façade and many columns remain entire) towering above them, the orange trees and the sea, afford a view doubly pleasing and grateful to the traveller after the dreary landscape of the Pontine Marshes. There is but one inn at Terracina but that is a very large one; there is, however, but very indifferent fare and bad attendance. The innkeeper is a sad over-reaching rascal, who fleeces in the most unmerciful manner the traveller who is not spesato. ”

“ Adventure of the Popkins Family It was but a few days before that the carriage of Alderman Popkins had driven up to the inn of Terracina. Those who have seen an English family carriage on the continent, must know the sensation it produces. It is an epitome of England; a little morsel of the old island rolling about the world--every thing so compact, so snug, so finished and fitting. The wheels that roll on patent axles without rattling; the body that hangs so well on its springs, yielding to every motion, yet proof against every shock. ”

“ Monte Circello, with the opposite promontory of Terracina, where the Pontine Marshes terminate, in all probability consists also of a system of chalk rocks.
We left the sea coast, and soon reached the charming plain of Fondi. Every one must admire this little spot of fertile and well cultivated land, enclosed with hills, which themselves are by no means wild. Oranges, in great numbers, are still hanging on the trees; the crops, all of wheat, are beautifully green; olives are growing in the fields, and the little city is in the bottom. ”

“ In the course of the repast the tales of robbers which harassed the mind of the fair Venetian, were brought into discussion. The landlord and the waiter served up such a number of them as they served up the dishes, that they almost frightened away the poor lady’s appetite. Among these was the story of the school of Terracina, still fresh in every mind, where the students were carried up the mountains by the banditti, in hopes of ransom, and one of them massacred, to bring the parents to terms for the others. ”

“ Nor are the prospects more promising in the direction of Terracina, for there, too, every outlet is stopped by dunes. The streams and canals crossing the marshes are, moreover, choked up with a dense {267} growth of aquatic plants, which impedes the circulation of the water, feeble though it be. Herds of buffaloes are sometimes driven into these streams to trample down the vegetation, but neither this barbarous procedure nor the more regular process of mowing has availed against its rapid and luxuriant growth, and the water remains stagnant. ”

“ Several of the Latin cities, including Tibur and Praeneste, were situated on the terrace-like underfalls of these mountains, [2] while Cora, Norba and Setia were placed in like manner on the slopes of the Volscian mountains (Monti Lepini) , a rugged and lofty limestone range, which runs parallel to the main mass of the Apennines, being separated from them, however, by the valley of the Trerus (Sacco) , and forms a continuous barrier from there to Terracina. ”

“ The three in the hallway crowded into the window-opening, tense, wordless, mesmerized, peering aghast toward the screen of vines which veiled the end of the path.
The full moon, which Brice had glimpsed as it was rising, a minute or so before, now breasted the low tops of the orange trees across the highroad and sent a level shaft of light athwart the lawn. Its clear beams played vividly on the dark forest, revealing the screen of vines at the head of the path, and revealing also three crouching dark figures, close to the ground, at the very edge of the lawn, not six feet from the path head. ”

“ Only an awning has been added to protect the terrace from the sun. I walked out on this terrace, where Shelley used to listen to Jane's singing. The sea was fretting at its base, just as Mrs. Shelley says it did when the Don Juan disappeared.
From San Terenzio we walked back to Lerici through olive woods, attended by a memory which toned the almost overpowering beauty of the place to sadness. ”

“ Tregenna followed her in silence as she went out, and took, without looking behind her, the path that led, through winding walks, and between quaint, stiff yew hedges, to the Italian garden. There a broad terrace, with a stone balustrade, led down to bright beds of late autumn flowers, still pretty and fragrant, though they were growing tall and straggling at this late season, and were, in places, nipped with the early frosts of the coming winter. ”

“ A great piece of the mountain-side, comprising half a dozen vine terraces, a few olive terraces, and a patch of pinewood, had fallen bodily down into the river-bed, leaving the slope a bare and scarified mass of rock and red soil. The little Guadelle river, a tributary of the Aliso, was completely dammed. Perucca was the poorer by the complete disappearance of one of its sunniest slopes, but the house stood unhurt.
“No more will fall,” said Denise presently. “See; there is the bare rock.” ”

“ At Torcello there is nothing but the light to see-- nothing at least but a sort of blooming sand-bar intersected by a single narrow creek which does duty as a canal and occupied by a meagre cluster of huts, the dwellings apparently of market- gardeners and fishermen, and by a ruinous church of the eleventh century. It is impossible to imagine a more penetrating case of unheeded collapse. Torcello was the mother-city of Venice, and she lies there now, a mere mouldering vestige, like a group of weather-bleached parental bones left impiously unburied. ”

“ There was no pool of water there, no spring, as far as I could see; and a small cave at the foot of the high bank was dry, for, boylike, I peeped in over the drift that half-filled its mouth.
Leaving the field, we made for Trevean farmhouse. The snow in the unfrequented lane that we followed was unmarked by any footprint except the track of a hare. Soon we could smell the reek of burning furze, and as we came in sight of the high stone chimney, we heard the mooing of the cattle that had been driven in from the wild moors around. ”

“ The baby's face cleared. Now she knew in which direction Dorcas was going. That fork led to the Glen. And the Glen was a favorite Sunday afternoon ramble for Link and Chum. Olive knew that, because she and Dorcas more than once had walked thither to meet them.
Olive was pleasantly forgetful of her parents' positive command that she refrain from walking alone on the motor-infested Sunday roads. She set off at a fast jog trot over the nearby hill, on whose other side ran the Glen road.
Link Ferris, with Chum at his heels, was tramping moodily toward the Glen. ”

“ His first home was amidst a clump of rushes bordering a lonely pool on the high ground between two of the Cornish heights. Even when maternal instinct is strongest, fear of detection kept doe and leveret apart during the day; but she never failed to suckle him at nightfall and before sunrise, on her way back from the feeding-ground on the lowland. From dawn to dusk the leveret lay in the snuggest of couches in the trough between the hills, and when not asleep would watch the reeds waving over the shallows, or the moor-hen, whose nest was on the opposite bank, swim on the open water. ”

“ A quivering beam of yellow light; then Elza saw that upon occasion, as Tarrano's finger slid a lever, the beam narrowed, intensified to a bright lavender. And now where it struck, the vegetation withered. Blackened, sometimes burst into tiny flame, and parted thus before them as they advanced.
The jungle was silent; yet, as Elza listened, beneath the crackle of the burning twigs she could hear the tiny myriad voices of insect life. Startled voices as the heat of Tarrano's beam struck them. Rustling leaves; breaking twigs; things scurrying and sliding away, unseen in the darkness. ”

“ Alone, unnoticed, they had departed from the City of Ice on a small flying platform similar to the one they had used before. The night had passed; day, with a new warmth to the sun, came again. Flying low, with Tarrano in a grim, moody silence, and Elza staring downward.
The aural lights were overhead when at the last Tarrano brought the platform to rest. A thick, luxuriant forest. Huge trees with rope-like roots and heavy vines. Others with leaves like the ears of an elephant. And the ground hidden by almost impenetrable underbrush. ”

“ In winter-time few bleaker spots can be found than the crest of this Cornish height, to which the scanty herbage clings close like a skull-cap, and on which stonecrop and lichen make nearly as hard a struggle for existence as the hare. Yet for one thing the spot is favoured, inasmuch as it catches the earliest rays of the sun when the slopes are yet grey and the lowlands lie in gloom. ”

“ Without pause, without so much as a false step, he traversed those wild gullies, wet where the dew still lay under the leafy screen of boughs, watered by streams which gurgled over mighty boulders—a wilderness where banks of ferns grew in the dank shade and the thick tangle of undergrowth blocked the traveller’s way.
But well on into the afternoon Tresco had reached the neighbourhood of his cave, where his recluse life dragged out its weary days. His route lay for a brief mile along the track which led to the diggings. ”

“ Differences of shade there are, but not a vestige of colour, save on the dome of a giant pine, the hue of which awakes as he gazes. Instantly the faint green flush catches his eye, and to the East he turns his mask again: “umph!” the rim of the sun shows in the trough of the hills: it is day. Even then he dreads to return to the lake; after all it is early for man to be stirring and he may reach the drain unseen. Skirting the plantation he slinks along lanes in the boulder-strewn gorse, gains the edge of the waste land, and looks over. A cow is grazing in the rough pasture that runs up to it. ”

“ Save for an occasional raid on a labourer’s garden at the foot of the hill, he contented himself with the less succulent fare of a farm on the barren upland between Bartinney and Caer Bran. The harder life was not without its compensations. By journeying over the hills in search of food—for at times he would wander far to browse on wild thyme and other tender herbage in sheltered spots of the waste—he got to know his beats as well as the Earthstopper knew every step of the rough ways between the fox-holts. ”

“ She could not find a hover quite to her liking, but in lack of a better, she chose a ledge where, in an angle of the stream that drained the bog, the bank furnished a screen from the biting wind which blew up the valley and soughed over the uplands. After enlarging the ledge into a shelf, she shaped the excavation for the nest, which she fashioned out of dead rushes and withered grasses, and which she lined with the softest products that Nature offered her—tattered reed-plumes and seed-down of the bulrush. ”

“ THE EARTHSTOPPER UNDER THE STARS It was an hour after midnight when the Earthstopper of the Penwith Hunt left his cottage on the outskirts of Madron. He carried a lantern and a rough terrier followed at his heels. His track led, by lanes in the heather, over a cairn to the furze-clad downs overlooking the lake.
To the West, sombre hills rose against the jewelled vault where the stars in the depths of the frosty sky kept watch over the slumbering earth. Half-way over the downs, beneath the roots of a stunted pine, was a fox-earth. The old man knelt down and stopped it with faggots of furze. ”

“ The general character of the rocks in the neighbourhood of Treginnys is of that equivocal nature alluded to in the beginning of these notes: here and there they assume the appearance of a compact earthy felspar of an olive-green colour, and then probably often contain epidote, compact veins and crystals of which I saw in more than one instance. In one place this compact green rock occurs in angular columns horizontally aggregated, and forming a part of the cliffs on the north side of the harbour. ”

“ Even after the glories of Rome and Ravenna, the Tergestine church may be studied with no small pleasure and profit, as an example of a kind of transformation 75 of which neither Rome nor Ravenna can supply another example.
Whatever was the first origin of Tergeste, whoever, among the varied and perplexing inhabitants of this corner of the Hadriatic coast, were the first to pitch on the spot for a dwelling-place of man, it is plain that it ranks among the cities which have grown up out of hill-forts. ”

“ It is a place of rocks, of heather and large-rooted ferns, and it is very steep, terrace rising upon terrace to the heights. At the bottom of the valley are trees; here also is a wild path and a wild stream broken upon the rocks, and becoming whole again at the foot of a glen. For centuries the place has been haunted in men's imagination, and they have avoided it because it is a garden of—angels. I am going now to make it bloom, I am going to grasp that solitude and weave with it a mantle of light. I am going to walk on my pixy-path and watch the shadows creeping up and down my pixy-glen ”