JOURNEY FROM SIENA TO ROME. None stirring, save the herdsman and his herd, To the south and south west of Siena is the Maremma*, a tract which, whether it was formerly salubrious or not, seems at least to have been both fertile and well peopled. Most of the twelve cities which composed the Etruscan league were situated in this district. The ruins of Populonia and Vetulonia are still visible in the most pestilential part of it; nor was the situation of Luna much more favourable. Pisa and Volterra were at that time rich and flourishing towns, though they sunk into insignificance under the empire. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries they revived again, insomuch that the former boasted no less than one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants, and even the latter reckoned as many as fifty thousand. While these republics retained their liberty, Massa and Grosseto, in the neighbourhood of Populonia and Vetulonia, contained, each of them, from twenty to thirty thousand inhabitants: at present, they are almost * The Maremma, in its largest extent, stretches along the shore of the Mediterranean from Leghorn to Terracina, reaching inland as far as the first chain of the Apennines. Its length is about 200 miles; its breadth varies, and, in the Agro Romano, where it is greatest, is from thirty to forty miles. deserted: during the winter months the population of Massa may amount to two or three thousand, while in the summer it scarcely exceeds as many hundreds. In the country the depopulation is even greater still. In each district the possessions of such families as became extinct devolved upon the community; hence it came to pass, that some few families which had escaped the general devastation inherited the property of all the rest. In process of time, however, these families also became extinct; and the whole district, under the name of a bandita, devolved upon one of the neighbouring villages. There are villages to be found in the Maremma which possess as many as seven or eight of these bandite, and yet cannot muster inhabitants enough to cultivate a fourth part of their domains. The population itself, therefore, being too insignificant for the culture of the soil*, the inhabitants of the Casentine and other high and healthy * The country thus depopulated, nothing remained but to take advantage of the spontaneous production of the soil, to let the land run to grass, and to introduce a sort of wandering tribes, who should dwell here only in winter. During that season, men, as well as cattle, may roam through the wilderness with comparative impunity. It did not, however, suit the metayer of the upland districts to leave his home, and take up his abode in the Maremma. There came, therefore, necessarily to be interposed between the proprietors of the lands in the interior, and those on the sea coast, a race of wandering shepherds, possessing nothing but their cattle, and migrating with them, according to the seasons, from the hilly to the level country. Under the conduct of these men, 400,000 sheep, 30,000 horses, with a vast number of cows and goats, are annually reared for the supply of the Valdarno, and the other vales of Tuscany, where no cattle are bred.-See Chateauvieux. tracts migrate hither to feed their cattle, to sow corn, make charcoal, saw wood, cut hoops, and peel cork. The most usual season of descent is the winter; but a portion of the mountain peasantry also assist in getting in the harvest. Most of the summer workmen imbibe the diseases of the place, and some even of those who are employed in winter operations decamp too late, leaving their corpses on the road, or crawling away, "like poisoned rats to die at home." Leaving Siena, we traversed a dreary country, where, instead of valleys, we met with wide yawning ravines, separated by irregular hillocks of bare brown earth. For many miles round Siena the country is hill or mountain. The more rugged hills are planted with olive-trees; the rest are arable, interspersed with vineyards, some of which are in high repute. Those of Montepulciano, for example, produce a wine celebrated by Redi as the "king of wines;" Montepulcian che d' ogni vino è il re; while those of Chianti yield from their "canine grape a' vino scelto,' which many prefer to his majesty." We passed through Buon Convento, a wretched village, where the Emperor Henry VII. was poisoned by receiving the sacrament from a Dominican friar—an event from which this "good convent" received its name. We next passed the miserable hovels of San Quirico, and the solitary post-house of La Scala, not far from which are the Baths of St. Philip, where the calcareous water, being made to fall in spray upon moulds, hardens into exquisite cameos and intaglios. The spring, which is a very copious one of hot transparent water, issues from Monte Amiato, about four miles from Radicofani, and about half a mile from the road side. Of this petrifying water, which holds in solution a considerable portion of sulphur and carbonate of lime, advantage has been taken to form casts, somewhat in the following manner:-An impression of the medal is first taken in sulphur, or on glass. A series of three or four pits, communicating by means of tubes, are sunk in the ground at a short distance from each other. In these pits, deposition to a certain extent is allowed to take place till the water is charged only with the requisite portion of earth. It is then made to fall through a tube on two pieces of board, two or three inches broad, placed crosswise, the effect of which is to break the stream, and throw off the water in all directions. Beneath this crossed piece is another similar one, and a third still lower; but all of them crossing in different directions, the more completely to break and disperse the column of water. These crossed pieces are surrounded by a frame work of wood, of a pyramidal form, within which are arranged the moulds previously touched with a solution of soap to facilitate the separation of the They are disposed all round the pyramidal case, and inclined a little forward, opposite the several series of crossed sticks, and at the distance of about a foot from their extremities. In this position they receive a constant and equable dash of the water, which deposits its earthy matter on the mould. The cast, thus obtained, may be made of any thickness; but in small figures, cast. it is commonly from an eighth to a fourth of an inch. The time employed in its formation is ten or twelve days*. Soon after quitting La Scala we began the ascent of the volcanic Radicofani, where all is utter sterility and nakedness; nor did we wonder that this savage prospect should have reminded Addison of the Italian proverb, which says, that "the Pope has the flesh, and the Grand Duke the bones, of Italy." At the foot of the mountain flows the Ricorsi, a torrent which, in the winter season, frequently overflows its banks, and is sometimes impassable for several days. That there is no little danger in attempting to cross it at such a time may be inferred from the guide-book, which quaintly observes, that you will have to pass it four times-if if you are not swallowed up in either of the first three. Confused masses of rock and stone, heaped together in shapeless desolation at the summit of Radicofani, are supposed to mark its ancient crater. Near it may still be seen the ruins of a fort which often made a figure in the history of Italy, and which was subsequently destroyed -though not till the course of events had stripped it of its importance-by the blowing up of the powder magazine. This frontier was formerly scarce less notorious for banditti than Terracina itself has been in later times. Ghino di Tacco-an outlaw whom Dante and Boccacio did not disdain to celebrate; and, what is still more singular, one on whom the Pope himself thought fit to * See Williams's Travels in Italy, &c. Vol. i. |