Italy from the Alps to Mount Etna . i THE : ? *mn THE NORTHERN WANDERER IN THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA. 285 mysterious sounds meet the listening ear—a cry—a harsh croaking—a distant shot,—a shudder in the soughing pine-trees. There is in all this a mixture of the weird and thebeautiful which powerfully excites the imagination. From the thickets of Ardea to theforlorn mouths of the Tiber, which loses itself sullenly in the sand, and whose outgoing isblessed by no human hand,—from thence to this place there spreads a dreary wretchedshore, forgotten by spring and love, whose sandy soil only affords nouris
Italy from the Alps to Mount Etna . i THE : ? *mn THE NORTHERN WANDERER IN THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA. 285 mysterious sounds meet the listening ear—a cry—a harsh croaking—a distant shot,—a shudder in the soughing pine-trees. There is in all this a mixture of the weird and thebeautiful which powerfully excites the imagination. From the thickets of Ardea to theforlorn mouths of the Tiber, which loses itself sullenly in the sand, and whose outgoing isblessed by no human hand,—from thence to this place there spreads a dreary wretchedshore, forgotten by spring and love, whose sandy soil only affords nourishment to a few. CASTLE OF PALO. shrubs. Heather, lentiscus, wild myrtle and olive-bushes, and dwart oaks surrounded byaromatic-smelling weeds, find a scanty living here. The soil is in part marshy ; for thelittle streams which meander through it in the rainy season, are absorbed by the sandbefore reaching the sea, and thus form steaming pools, out of which rise mists and swarmsof gnats, and, as the summer advances the grey, ghostly malaria. It knocks with itsbony hand at the few miserable huts of the shepherds and peasants and implacablydemands its yearly tribute of human lives. The pallid herd-boy who has withstood itsinfluence for sixteen or seventeen poverty-stricken years, the lean, brown girl before shecan wear her marriage wreath of scanty blossoms, the weather-beaten, hardy man and hiswife amidst her joyless and toilsome existence,—all these the malaria takes year after yearand drags them pitilessly to death, and hunts them, dying, across the sun-burned heath,and returns ever greedier of pre
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Keywords: ., bookauthorcavagnasangiulianidig, bookcentury1800, bookdecade1870
