At 6 a.m. we were in our carriage, brought round by the ever-punctual Antonio, and driving up the steep ascent in the long shadows of early day, sunlight on the mountain tops, larks singing their carol, and heavy dew lying on the sweet-scented grass and macchie round us.
Every yard of the way was lovely, and every turn brought out new beauties; grandest mountains rising from purple mists of morning, with jagged peak and architectural column, wide deep gorges, and villages nestling everywhere with campanile in their centre, among steep green hills.
Suddenly we came face to face with the snow-clad mountain of Bavella, white and glittering; and, standing before it, a perpendicular mountain of purple rock, serrated in the most wonderful manner, like a row of columns or a Druid's temple. This mountain boasted the name of the Fourca di Basinao, we were informed; and it continued to rear its wild hydra head before us all day from behind grassy hill or group of trees, until at length we faced its precipitous sides on the Bocca di Bavella.
Evia, further on, is a picturesque village, embosomed in trees, which shut out the most magnificent hills. Here was a fine old church, and tall campanile, as usual standing apart from the church; and, pacing slowly before it, a polite old curé, in rusty brown cassock, who took off his well-worn wideawake and bared his white head as the carriage passed.
The road to Bavella is not among the best. It is not a diligence road; and is, besides, a good deal cut up by the heavy charcoal and wood waggons which ply constantly up and down it.
The turns are sharp, and the route steep and rutty, as well as narrow; and a nervous person might feel uncomfortable winding above a deep precipitous gorge, at the bottom of which rushes a foaming river, and from whose opposite slopes rises the impenetrable forest.
Mossy rocks lay up the side of the cliff above our path; and presently great Titanic boulders, twice as big as an ordinary house, covered the mountain flank, and hung across our road, intermixed with the gnarled and knotted trunks of broken trees.
Here the ground grew soft and park-like; arbutus and garden shrubs edged our way; and Mediterranean heath, nine or ten feet high, over which peered grey crag and various trees, made the air heavy with sweetness.
Then on, to more open ground, past the village of Souza on its boulder-strewn hill, surrounded by groves of ilex and pine, overlooking wooded gorge and merry cascade; on, with the smoothly rounded snow mountain, and the peaked, richly coloured rocks ever before us—with sheets of blue and white anemone scattered upon the mossy ground at the foot of giant trees; ascending more and more steeply, with views ever more and more beautiful, into the enchanted forest, fir-cones crackling under the horses' feet, and thickly growing pines throwing shady tracery over the sunny pathway.
Caterpillars' bags overhung the road; and here and there a hacked tree had poured out a rich stream of turpentine. The bark of one of these was covered by a multitude of lovely little insects, something like ladybirds, but flat, scarlet coloured with black spots.