f which we have
been told, and hard to find in that waste, until we pass a curious
little patriarchal abode shaped like a wigwam, where, in the midst of
these wide pastures dwells a herdsman surrounded by his family, his
cattle, his dogs, his goats and his fowls--the beautiful animals of the
Campagna, long-haired, soft-eyed, rich-colored, like the human children
of the soil. Then we strike the Cremera, and exploring begins among its
rocky gullies, up and down which the spirited, sure-footed horses
scramble like chamois. Thick woods of cork-oak clothe their sides, and
copses of a deciduous tree which I never saw in its summer dress of
green, but which keeps its dead leaves all through the winter, a full
suit of soft, pale brown contrasting with the dark evergreens. Among
these woods grow all the wild-flowers of the long Roman spring from
January to May--flowers that I never saw in bloom at the same time
anywhere else. On banks overcanopied by faded boughs nodded myriads of
snowdrops; farther on we held our horses' heads well up as they slipped,
almost sitting, down the damp rocky clefts of a gorge whose sides were
purple with violets, mingling their delicious odor, the sweetest and
most sentimental of perfumes, with the fresh, geranium-like scent of the
cyclamen, which here and there flung back its delicate pinkish petals
like one amazed: then came acres of anemones--not our pale wind-shaken
flower, but brave asters of half a dozen superb kinds. Up and down these
passes we forced our way through interlacing branches, which drooped too
low, until we had crossed the ridges on either side the Cremera, and
gained the valley at the head of which is Isola Farnese, the
rock-fortress supposed to occupy the site of the citadel of Etruscan
Veii. It is not really an island, in spite of its name; only a bold
peninsula, round whose base two rivulets flow and nearly meet. It is
called a village, and so it is, with quite a population, but the great
courtyard of the fifteenth-century castle contains them all, and the
huts, pig-pens, kennels and coops which they seem to inhabit
indiscriminately. Except where the bluff overlooks the valley,
everything is closed and shut in by rocks and gorges, through one of
which a lovely waterfall drips from a covert of boughs and shrubbery and
wreathing ferns and creepers into a little stream, which with musical
clamor rushes at a picturesque old mill: through another the road from
the castle passes thr