Page:In Maremma, by Ouida (vol 3).djvu/301

 Every rood of the soil that she trod was full of Etruscan memories, but that she knew not.

Here had been Vulci and Toseania; here had been Tarquinii and its vast necropolis; here had been Cære and the Centum Cellæ; the melancholy Marta flowing through immense and silent meadows to the sea, the low sombre hills that rose and fell in monotonous sequence, and now revealed the belfries of Corneto, and now the blue waters by what had once been Graviscæ, whilst on the eastward they rose higher and higher, and met the dark grey wall of the mighty Ciminian, half hidden in stormy clouds—all, all, had been Etruria Maritima, and beneath the mastic and the locust-tree, beneath the matgrass of the moors and the salt-rush of the marsh, there were cities, and palaces, and ramparts, and labyrinths, and necropoles, with their buried treasures that never more would see the light of day.

But she knew nothing of this.

She only saw a sad wild country that was unknown to her, vegetation that grew scantier and sicklier at each step, green swamps that had a familiar look, and moorlands that looked endless, and had no living