Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/445

Rh thistle-stalks, and assured us that it was a wholesome, cooling food: it suited our taste, however, as little as the raw cabbage at Segeste.

, April 30, 1787. Having reached the valley through which the rivulet of St. Pacio winds its way, we found the district consisting of a reddish-black and crumbly limestone, many brooks, a very white soil,—a beautiful valley, which the rivulet made extremely agreeable. The well-compounded, loamy soil is in some places twenty feet deep, and for the most part of similar quality throughout. The crops looked beautiful; but some of them were not very clean, and all of them very backward as compared with those on the southern side. Here there are the same little dwellings, and not a tree, as was the case immediately after leaving Castro Giovanni. On the banks of the river, plenty of pasture-land, but sadly confined by vast masses of thistles. In the gravel of the river we again found quartz, both simple and breccian.

Molimenti, quite a new village, wisely built in the centre of beautiful fields, and on the banks of the rivulet St. Paolo. The wheat in its neighbourhood was unrivalled: it will be ready for cutting as early as by the 20th of May. In the whole district I could not discover as yet a trace of volcanic influence: even the stream brings down no pebbles of that character. The soil is well mixed, heavy rather than light, and has, on the whole, a coffee-brown and slightly violet hue. All the hills on the left, which enclose the stream, are limestone, whose varieties I had no opportunity of observing. They, however, as they crumble under the influence of the weather, are evidently the causes of the great fertility that marks the district throughout.