Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/160

 by Roman or Gothic greed of gold, and modern science had not dreamed of their existence, even whilst busied in the excavations of Cyclopean Cosa, near at hand, southward, on the same seashore. Doubtless other sepulchres adjoined these, made under the same low swell of friable sandstone cliffs and hillocks, but any others were grown over by brushwood, and engulfed in earth disturbed by volcanic action, no trace of them, or of any opening that might have led to them, was ever found, even though in after days Musa searched diligently and often. They were lost as utterly as the vast labyrinth of Porsenna is lost; only the janitor's room had been left some little connection with the upper earth, and outer soil, by the passage of wild animals, who had found through the ever-open door of the entrance-cell a lair of safety.

Their lonely territory was southward of the great lake that the Romans called Lacus Aprilis, along whose shore the Aurelian Way once was made; it was northward of the weird rocks of Monte Argentaro, and shared in the rich sylva and flora which the central part of the Maremma possesses, in that grander and virginal aspect