A distaste for their towns, I skirted
the place by a lane that runs westward of the houses, and sitting upon
a low wall, I looked up at the Apennines, which were now plain above
me, and thought over my approaching passage through those hills.
But here I must make clear by a map the mass of mountains which I was
about to attempt, and in which I forded so many rivers, met so many
strange men and beasts, saw such unaccountable sights, was imprisoned,
starved, frozen, haunted, delighted, burnt up, and finally refreshed
in Tuscany - in a word, where I had the most extraordinary and
unheard-of adventures that ever diversified the life of man.
The straight line to Rome runs from Milan not quite through Piacenza,
but within a mile or two of that city. Then it runs across the first
folds of the Apennines, and gradually diverges from the Emilian Way.
It was not possible to follow this part of the line exactly, for there
was no kind of track. But by following the Emilian Way for several
miles (as I had done), and by leaving it at the right moment, it was
possible to strike the straight line again near a village called
Medesano.
Now on the far side of the Apennines, beyond their main crest, there
happens, most providentially, to be a river called the Serchio, whose
valley is fairly straight and points down directly to Rome. To follow
this valley would be practically to follow the line to Rome, and it
struck the Tuscan plain not far from Lucca.
But to get from the Emilian Way over the eastern slope of the
Apennines' main ridge and crest, to where the Serchio rises on the
western side, is a very difficult matter. The few roads across the
Apennines cut my track at right angles, and were therefore useless. In
order to strike the watershed at the sources of the Serchio it was
necessary to go obliquely across a torrent and four rivers (the Taro,
the Parma, the Enza, and the Secchia), and to climb the four spurs
that divided them; crossing each nearer to the principal chain as I
advanced until, after the Secchia, the next climb would be that of the
central crest itself, on the far side of which I should find the
Serchio valley.
Perhaps in places roads might correspond to this track. Certainly the
bulk of it would be mule-paths or rough gullies - how much I could not
tell. The only way I could work it with my wretched map was to note
the names of towns' or hamlets more or less on the line, and to pick
my way from one to another. I wrote them down as follows: Fornovo,
Calestano, Tizzano, Colagna - the last at the foot of the final pass.
The distance to that pass as the crow flies was only a little more
than thirty miles. So exceedingly difficult was the task that it took
me over two days. Till I reached Fornovo beyond the Taro, I was not
really in the hills.
By country roads, picking my way, I made that afternoon for Medesano.
The lanes were tortuous; they crossed continual streams that ran from
the hills above, full and foaming after the rain, and frothing with
the waste of the mountains. I had not gone two miles when the sky
broke; not four when a new warmth began to steal over the air and a
sense of summer to appear in the earth about me. With the greatest
rapidity the unusual weather that had accompanied me from Milan was
changing into the normal brilliancy of the south; but it was too late
for the sun to tell, though he shone from time to time through clouds
that were now moving eastwards more perceptibly and shredding as they
moved.
Quite tired and desiring food, keen also for rest after those
dispiriting days, I stopped, before reaching Medesano, at an inn where
three ways met; and there I purposed to eat and spend the night, for
the next day, it was easy to see, would be tropical, and I should rise
before dawn if I was to save the heat. I entered.
The room within was of red wood. It had two tables, a little counter
with a vast array of bottles, a woman behind the counter, and a small,
nervous man in a strange hat serving. And all the little place was
filled and crammed with a crowd of perhaps twenty men, gesticulating,
shouting, laughing, quarrelling, and one very big man was explaining
to another the virtues of his knife; and all were already amply
satisfied with wine. For in this part men do not own, but are paid
wages, so that they waste the little they have.
I saluted the company, and walking up to the counter was about to call
for wine. They had all become silent, when one man asked me a question
in Italian. I did not understand it, and attempted to say so, when
another asked the same question; then six or seven - and there was a
hubbub. And out of the hubbub I heard a similar sentence rising all
the time. To this day I do not know what it meant, but I thought (and
think) it meant 'He is a Venetian,' or 'He is the Venetian.' Something
in my broken language had made them think this, and evidently the
Venetians (or a Venetian) were (or was) gravely unpopular here. Why, I
cannot tell. Perhaps the Venetians were blacklegs. But evidently a
Venetian, or the whole Venetian nation, had recently done them a
wrong.
At any rate one very dark-haired man put his face close up to mine,
unlipped his teeth, and began a great noise of cursing and
threatening, and this so angered me that it overmastered my fear,
which had till then been considerable.
