Soon the only kind of cultivation to be seen from the road
consists of rice-grounds, looking like--what in truth they are--
poisonous swamps. Then come swamps pure and simple, too bad even to
be turned into rice grounds,--or rather simply swamps impure; for a
stench at most times of the year comes from them, like a warning of
their pestilential nature, and their unfitness for the sojourn of
man. A few shaggy, wild-looking cattle may be seen wandering over
the flat waste, muddy to the shoulders from wading in the soft
swamps. A scene of more utter desolation it is hardly possible to
meet with in such close neighbourhood to a living city.
Paolina shivered, and drew her little grey cloak more closely around
her shoulders; not from cold, though a bleak wind was blowing across
the marshes. She was warmed by walking; but the aspect of the scene
before her almost frightened the Venetian girl by the savagery of
its desolation.
The raised causeway, however, keeps on its course amid the low-lying
marshes on either side of it; and presently the peculiar form of
outline belonging to a forest composed entirely of the maritime pine
is distinguishable on the horizon to the left. The road quickly
draws nearer to it; and the large, heavy, velvet-like masses of dark
verdure become visible. In a forest such as the famous Pineta,
consisting of the maritime pine only, the lines, especially when
seen at a distance, have more of horizontal and less of
perpendicular direction than in any other assemblage of trees.
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