We slept no-where, except perhaps in the carriage, between our last
residence at Bologna and this delightful city, to which we passed
apparently through a new region of the earth, or even air; clambering up
mountains covered with snow, and viewing with amazement the little
vallies between, where, after quitting the summer season, all glowing
with heat and spread into verdure, we found cherry-trees in blossom,
oaks and walnuts scarcely beginning to bud. These mountains are however
much below those of Savoy for dignity and beauty of appearance, though
high enough to be troublesome, and barren enough to be desolate. These
Appenines have been called by some the Back Bone of Italy, as Varenius
and others style the Mountains of the Moon in Africa, Back Bone of the
World; and these, as they do, run in a long chain down the middle of the
Peninsula they are placed in; but being rounded at top are supposed to
be aquatick, while the Alps, Andes, &c. are of late acknowledged by
philosophers to be volcanic, as the most lofty of _them_ terminate in
points of granite, wholly devoid of horizontal strata, and without
petrifactions contained in them,
_Here_ the tracts around display
How impetuous ocean's sway
Once with wasteful fury spread
The wild waves o'er each mountain's head.