At Parma we slept in the Albergo della Croce Bianca, which is more a
bric-a-brac shop than an inn; and slept but badly, for the good folk of
Parma twanged guitars and exercised their hoarse male voices all night
in the street below. We were glad when Christian called us, at 5 A.M.,
for an early start across the Apennines. This was the day of a right
Roman journey. In thirteen and a half hours, leaving Parma at 6, and
arriving in Sarzana at 7.30, we flung ourselves across the spine of
Italy, from the plains of Eridanus to the seashore of Etruscan Luna. I
had secured a carriage and extra post-horses the night before; therefore
we found no obstacles upon the road, but eager drivers, quick relays,
obsequious postmasters, change, speed, perpetual movement. The road
itself is a noble one, and nobly entertained in all things but
accommodation for travellers. At Berceto, near the summit of the pass,
we stopped just half an hour, to lunch off a mouldly hen and six eggs;
but that was all the halt we made.
As we drove out of Parma, striking across the plain to the _ghiara_ of
the Taro, the sun rose over the austere autumnal landscape, with its
withered vines and crimson haws. Christian, the mountaineer, who at home
had never seen the sun rise from a flat horizon, stooped from the box to
call attention to this daily recurring miracle, which on the plain of
Lombardy is no less wonderful than on a rolling sea. From the village of
Fornovo, where the Italian League was camped awaiting Charles VIII. upon
that memorable July morn in 1495, the road strikes suddenly aside, gains
a spur of the descending Apennines, and keeps this vantage till the
pass of La Cisa is reached. Many windings are occasioned by thus adhering
to aretes, but the total result is a gradual ascent with free prospect
over plain and mountain. The Apennines, built up upon a smaller scale
than the Alps, perplexed in detail and entangled with cross sections and
convergent systems, lend themselves to this plan of carrying highroads
along their ridges instead of following the valley.
What is beautiful in the landscape of that northern water-shed is the
subtlety, delicacy, variety, and intricacy of the mountain outlines.
There is drawing wherever the eye falls. Each section of the vast
expanse is a picture of tossed crests and complicated undulations. And
over the whole sea of stationary billows, light is shed like an ethereal
raiment, with spare colour--blue and grey, and parsimonious green--in
the near foreground. The detail is somewhat dry and monotonous; for
these so finely moulded hills are made up of washed earth, the immemorial
wrecks of earlier mountain ranges. Brown villages, not unlike those of
Midland England, low houses built of stone and tiled with stone, and
square-towered churches, occur at rare intervals in cultivated hollows,
where there are fields and fruit trees. Water is nowhere visible except
in the wasteful river-beds. As we rise, we break into a wilder country,
forested with oak, where oxen and goats are browsing. The turf is starred
with lilac gentian and crocus bells, but sparely. Then comes the highest
village, Berceto, with keen Alpine air. After that, broad rolling downs
of yellowing grass and russet beech-scrub lead onward to the pass La Cisa.
The sense of breadth in composition is continually satisfied through this
ascent by the fine-drawn lines, faint tints, and immense air-spaces of
Italian landscape. Each little piece reminds one of England; but the
geographical scale is enormously more grandiose, and the effect of majesty
proportionately greater.
From La Cisa the road descends suddenly; for the southern escarpment of
the Apennines, as of the Alpine, barrier is pitched at a far steeper
angle than the northern. Yet there is no view of the sea. That is
excluded by the lower hills which hem the Magra. The upper valley is
beautiful, with verdant lawns and purple hill-sides breaking down into
thick chestnut woods, through which we wound at a rapid pace for nearly
an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to golden; but the fruit
was ripe and heavy, ready at all points to fall. In the still October air
the husks above our heads would loosen, and the brown nuts rustle through
the foliage, and with a dull short thud, like drops of thunder-rain,
break down upon the sod. At the foot of this rich forest, wedged in
between huge buttresses, we found Pontremoli, and changed our horses here
for the last time. It was Sunday, and the little town was alive with
country-folk; tall stalwart fellows wearing peacock's feathers in their
black slouched hats, and nut-brown maids.
From this point the valley of the Magra is exceeding rich with fruit
trees, vines, and olives. The tendrils of the vine are yellow now, and
in some places hued like generous wine; through their thick leaves the
sun shot crimson. In one cool garden, as the day grew dusk, I noticed
quince trees laden with pale fruit entangled with pomegranates--green
spheres and ruddy amid burnished leaves. By the roadside too were many
berries of bright hues; the glowing red of haws and hips, the amber of
the pyracanthus, the rose tints of the spindle-wood. These make autumn
even lovelier than spring. And then there was a wood of chestnuts
carpeted with pale pink ling, a place to dream of in the twilight. But
the main motive of this landscape was the indescribable Carrara range,
an island of pure form and shooting peaks, solid marble, crystalline in
shape and texture, faintly blue against the blue sky, from which they
were but scarce divided. These mountains close the valley to south-east,
and seem as though they belonged to another and more celestial region.
Soon the sunlight was gone, and moonrise came to close the day, as we
rolled onward to Sarzana, through arundo donax and vine-girdled olive
trees and villages, where contadini lounged upon the bridges. There was
a stream of sound in our ears, and in my brain a rhythmic dance of
beauties caught through the long-drawn glorious golden autumn-day.