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137

The Mountains.

WHERE the winding chain of the Apennines stretches upward from the sea, crossing and recrossing the land with so many and such strange devices that from off the height of one of the mountains themselves there seems scarce room for a space of level plain, wedged in between ridges or sunk in clefts of hills, are the fair valleys of North Italy. Away from the blue sea and its blinding beauty, and from the leaden heat of the shores, they hold a fresh and free life of their own. Heavy night dews there feed the wild flowers that sicken in the nerveless pallor of the summer sea-air, and fresh water runs swiftly from mountain springs. Sometimes they are narrow and hidden valleys, in whose depth even villages could scarce find a home, did they not climb the hill-sides on either hand, and camp out, as it were, upon the meadows or among the vineyards. Or, again, they are wider, so that little towns have been built within them-quaint towns with tall houses and taller campanile, at whose side there flows, perhaps, a shallow river, brown upon its shingly bed.

Where, north of Genoa and the sea some twenty miles, the low back of the Giove mountain lies across the country, there is one of these more open valleys that creeps upward toward the higher peak of Antola, and along its way many a picturesque little village has grown for years, wearing out the thatched roofs of its chimneyless houses beneath hot suns and sharp mountain winds, cheerily holding its own against storms and inundations from the river hard by, that is so cruel a foe when the great rains have been at work. Little hamlets cling to the mountain sides, with scarce a common thoroughfare beside them; while other hamlets that stand upon the roadside can often boast a finer house in their midst, for the forestieri come in summer, and people whose houses lie conveniently can let rooms. By these villages a stone bridge is even built over the stream, so that the torrent may be safely crossed when it is swollen by the rains.

It was early on a summer evening that I first saw this broader and loveliest of North Apennine valleys which is between Giove's mountain and the more cloven peaks of Antola hills. In the towns it had been so hot of late that not all the delights of sea-bathing in soft, Mediterranean waters, from the marble steps of oliveplanted gardens, nor even the seductiveness of the dolce far niente beside spouting fountains, beneath colonnades

and on balconies, could banish the longing for the freedom of a fresher air, could atone for the remorseless Scirocco, for the sapping heat of those white August days and terrible nights. I sought release from them all and from the mosquitoes, where green trees might perchance fan a breeze towards me, where turf would at least be cool to lie on, and I sought it in the valleys -so little known even by those who live within their reach-of the Piedmontese Apennines.

I had seen a little station, just at the mouth of the Giove tunnel on the way to Alessandria, around which the country seemed to me crisply and luxuriantly beautiful. It was called Busalla. No one knew of it as a recommendable villeggiatura; Pontedecimo, Serravalle, Voltaggio were suggested to me instead, but I preferred my own choice. The little town is dirty, noisy, dusty as little Italian towns mostly are; but in the country round about I was not disappointed. Dense, bountiful chestnut woods, whose tender-coloured, fan-like leaves sway soothingly in the whispering breeze, would alone have been enough to freshen me, wearied by grand buildings and splendid colonnades. And besides the desired trees there was the gurgling of water all about-sometimes I could scarcely find from whence. I would glance around to see the stream that was babbling so audibly, and lay my head down again on the turf, fancying I was

mistaken, only to hear the mocking laughter of the water again when I had ceased to look for it.

When I arrived at Busalla, I was rather at a loss at first about a shelter for the night. The cleanest even of the two inns looked scarcely such as I cared to enter. I questioned a comely female in the piazza, who had figs and peaches in a basket on her head, and who was freely gesticulating and shouting at a handsome negoziante from Genoa. Having secured her attention by means of a larger remuneration than the nominal price she asked for the fruit, I learnt that there was a magnifico stabilimento at Savignone, a village some three miles off I could have a conveyance, or she herself would show me the way, as she was going to the village. I accepted her offer--the vettura I had seen standing out, and I should have feared for my safety at its mercy.

We came first through the little town, with its butcher, fruiterer, and inevitable barber, past the old whitewashed campanile with the sun-dial on its façade, and struck out upon a roughish way to the left. There was a torrent to cross on stepping-stones. I recollect that my guide laughed loudly at my care to keep on the stones. She trudged through the water on her bare feet. For a good half-hour the road runs alongside of just such a drowsy river as I have remembered before,

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