re filled up from
flank to flank with the _ghiara_, or pebbly bottom, of the Taro. The
Taro is not less wasteful than any other of the brotherhood of streams
that pour from Alp or Apennine to swell the Po. It wanders, an impatient
rivulet, through a wilderness of boulders, uncertain of its aim,
shifting its course with the season of the year, unless the jaws of some
deep-cloven gully hold it tight and show how insignificant it is. As we
advance, the hills approach again; between their skirts there is nothing
but the river-bed; and now on rising ground above the stream, at the
point of juncture between the Ceno and the Taro, we find Fornovo. Beyond
the village the valley broadens out once more, disclosing Apennines
capped with winter snow. To the right descends the Ceno. To the left
foams the Taro, following whose rocky channel we should come at last to
Pontremoli and the Tyrrhenian Sea beside Sarzana. On a May-day of
sunshine like the present, the Taro is a gentle stream. A waggon drawn
by two white oxen has just entered its channel, guided by a contadino
with goat-skin leggings, wielding a long goad. The patient creatures
stem the water, which rises to the peasant's thighs and ripples round
the creaking wheels. Swaying to and fro, as the shingles shift upon the
river-bed, they make their way across; and now they have emerged upon
the stones; and now we lose them in a flood of sunlight.

It was by this pass that Charles VIII. in 1495 returned from Tuscany,
when the army of the League was drawn up waiting to intercept and crush
him in the mouse-trap of Fornovo. No road remained for Charles and his
troops but the rocky bed of the Taro, running as I have described it
between the spurs of steep hills. It is true that the valley of the
Baganza leads, from a little higher up among the mountains, into
Lombardy. But this pass runs straight to Parma; and to follow it would
have brought the French upon the walls of a strong city. Charles could
not do otherwise than descend upon the village of Fornovo, and cut his
way thence in the teeth of the Italian army over stream and boulder
between the gorges of throttling mountain. The failure of the Italians
to achieve what here upon the ground appears so simple delivered Italy
hand-bound to strangers. Had they but succeeded in arresting Charles and
destroying his forces at Fornovo, it is just possible that then--even
then, at the eleventh hour--Italy might have gained the sense of
nation