Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/102

 not help them, and so their lives go on and end: and no one cares.

It is the sea-shore, indeed.

But all the health, and vigour, and strong activity, and pungent fresh odours, and buoyant winds, of the sea elsewhere are too often missing here. No one knows how hateful the blessed and beautiful sea can be who has not seen it, oily, and glassy, and motionless, stretching under a grey sky that looks parched with mists of intensest heat, and with the fever fog of the poisonous summer hovering about the glaring sands.

It is no sin of the sea's; the sin is man's alone.

Centuries upon centuries of carnage, and destruction, and fatal waste, have laid the land bare, and brought disease and desolation in their train. Perhaps one day the whole earth will be like this wasted Maremma shore; it is very possible. This land was healthful and lovely enough in the days when the legions of Fabius coveted its wealth; and even in the later age, when Rutilius dropped anchor at Populonia, it was still for the most part busy, crowded, prosperous.

The sickliness of the shore, however,