Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 1).djvu/162

 stony waste bearing the traces still of the ancient Consular way.

From the hills and mounds of sandstone, covered with mountain-box and juniper bushes, that swelled up low and long in a ridge that traversed the part of the moorland which she so especially haunted, the child, looking north and south, could see the whole coast-line from the deep semicircular bay to the eastward, enclosed between Populonia and the Cape of Troja, and facing the peaks of Elba, to the south-westward where Telamone had been a crowded port, and where once the great Argo herself had anchored, yet where now even the little coasters, that drew but two feet of water, often ran aground, and dull Orbetello sheltered a dreary life of sickly soldiers and of sullen coastguards and of listless people picking the salt crystals from the soil.

Over that blue sea, where once the Argonauts sailed, and the Etruscan pirates hunted the Latin galleys, and the merchant vessels went out from the grand and busy ports laden with the Lydian wool, the ironwork that Rome deemed of even more worth than men, the silver and the gold chasings