Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. I.djvu/387

Rh day, intoxicated as if with sunshine, succeeds another, gladdening the well-watered earth. The situation, too, of these valleys and their scenery, is glorious!

Extending from the southern ranges of the Cottian Alps, these valleys expand like a fan towards the plain of Piedmont, upon which they lie, between their mountain ridges, as upon a high terrace. The fertile heights and plains along the mountain ridges are covered with chestnut woods, which are just now laden with fruit, “the manna of the valleys,” as it is called, because it furnishes food to the inhabitants of the valleys the whole year through, from the one harvest to the other. Lower down grows the mulberry-tree in great luxuriance, the maize, the vine, &c., intermixed with beautiful pasture-land, while through all these valleys rivers dance, and becks leap along, clearer and purer, it seems to me, than I have ever before seen elsewhere. Such are the rivers of Lucerne and Angrogna, and the wild Germanasco in the valley of San Martino. All proceed from sources in the Alps, and all contribute to swell, with their pure waters, the mighty Po, which leads them through Italy into the great ocean.

The valleys run out in rays from the mountains towards the plains, and as they open themselves into it, a view expands as grand almost as if over the sea, especially in the morning, when mists cover the plain, and the sun rises above this misty sea, over an extent of from one hundred and fifty to two hundred miles, and shines upon the blue mountain-chain of the Apennines, which bound the distant horizon in the States of Tuscany.