Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/161

 which the province between the rivers of Ombrone and Fiora owes to the forests of pine, of ilex, of cork, of oak, of manna-ash, and of locust-tree which clothe the slopes beneath the Apennines; to the wilderness of evergreen trees and shrubs that cover in their verdure and dusky gloom the ruins of Roman roads, of Latin castles, of Tyrrhene towns and sepulchres; to the innumerable pools and streams and lakes which are hidden away under impenetrable thickets, and known only to the sultan-hen and the wild duck, the nocturnal plover and the common coot. Away to the southward stretched vast grasslands, peopled solely by the melancholy buffalo, covered in spring with the elysian asphodel; and the dreary, solemn, almost treeless moors, walled in from the east by sombre mountain heights, and covering beneath their soil lost Ansedonia and perished Cosa, and the tombs of the Tarquins, and the moats and ramparts of the once mighty Ardea, and many another perished greatness of which the very name had been forgotten even in Virgil's generation.

Between the moors and the sea stretched all along the coast a yellow sandy beach, or a wide algæ-strewn swamp, or a rocky