But such an image is unsuited to the climate of Sardinia at any season. Smiling as the landscape now appeared, its most striking feature was associated with the idea of death.
That dense creamy vapour, formed by the pestiferous exhalations of the lowlands, is the death shroud of the plain outstretched beneath it.
DESCENT TO THE CAMPIDANO.
During the heats of summer, nay, sometimes from April till the latter end of November, the ravages of the deadly intempérie extend throughout the island to such a degree that in Captain Smyth's list of nearly 350 towns and villages included in his “Statistical Table of Sardinia,” full a third are noted as insalubrious. The disorder has the same character as malaria, but is far more virulent. Captain Smyth thus describes the symptoms: “The patient is first attacked by a headache and painful tension of the epigastric region, with alternate sensations of heat and chilliness; a fever ensues, the exacerbations of which are extremely severe, and are followed by a mournful debility, more or less injurious even to those accustomed to it, but usually fatal to strangers.” We have conversed with natives and residents who have recovered from repeated attacks of intempérie; foreigners suffer most. “Instances have been related to me,” observes Captain Smyth, “of strangers landing for a few hours only from Italian coasters, who were almost immediately carried off by its virulence; indeed, the very breathing of the air by a foreigner at night, or in the cool of the evening, is considered as certain death in some parts.”[54]
Not twelve months before our visit, an English officer was suddenly struck down and carried off while on a similar excursion in this part of the island. Sir Harry Darrell was one of the last men I should have thought liable to so fatal an attack. A few years ago, when returning from Caffreland just before the breaking out of the last war, I met him on the march to the frontier. I had off-saddled at noon, and while my horses were grazing, knee-haltered, on a slip of grass by the side of a running stream, was lying under the shade of a wild olive-tree, when the head-quarters' division of the —— Dragoon Guards passed along the road. Sir Harry and some other officers rode down into the meadow, and we talked of the state of Caffreland and of the principal chiefs, most of whom I had recently seen. I heard afterwards that he had got out fox-hounds and hunted the country about Fort Beaufort. He was a keen sportsman and clever artist. Some of his sketches in South Africa were published by Ackerman. His remains lie at Cagliari, where he was conveyed when struck by the intempérie, dying a few days after. A friend of mine, who was there at the time, informs me that Sir Harry's constitution had become debilitated, and he had rendered himself liable to the attack by exposure and over-fatigue. I mention the circumstance as a warning, but do not think there is much risk, with proper precautions, for men in good health, through most parts of the island, after the November rains have precipitated the miasma and purified the air. We ourselves slept in most pestiferous places, where the ravages of the disease were marked in the sallow countenances of the inhabitants, without experiencing the least inconvenience.
We rested at the summit of the pass commanding the distant view of the Campidano, which led to these remarks on the insalubrity of the country and the scourge of the intempérie. They are not, however, confined to the plains, but of course are more prevalent where marshes, stagnant waters, and rank vegetation engender vapours rising in the summer. Leaving my companion to finish the sketch copied in a former page, I slowly trotted on with the viandante, and, the descent becoming rapid, proceeded leisurely down the wooded glen, a depth of shade in which the heat, as well as the picturesque character of the scenery, tempted to linger. Old cork and ilex trees, with their rugged bark and grey foliage, throwing out rectangular arms of stiff and fantastic growth, wild vines hanging from the branches in festoons of brilliant hues, other trees with tawny orange leaves,—I believe a species of ash,—some of a rich claret, and the never-failing arbutus, here quite a tree, with its orange and crimson berries, all these massed together formed admirable contrasts in shape and colour. And then there was the gentle brook, never roaring or boisterous, but purling among rocks dividing it into still pools, with giant ferns hanging over the stream and bunches of hassock-grass luxuriating in the alluvial soil of its little deltas, and, where the forest receded, a graceful growth of shrubbery feathering the winding banks.
Some of the cork-trees were fine specimens, of great age. Several I measured in a rough way by embracing their trunks with extended arms. This, repeated four or five times, gave a circumference of twenty or twenty-five feet. The bark was ten inches thick. While so employed I was startled by a wild boar rushing by me into the thickets. The cork wood gradually thinned into scattered clumps on the slopes of the hills, and the winding valley, five or six miles long, was abruptly terminated by a bold mamelon, or green mound, covered with dwarf heath or turf; so shorn and smooth it appeared, probably from being pastured, in immediate contrast with the shaggy sides of the mountain glen. The horsetrack, avoiding this obstacle, led up the eastern acclivity of the glen, and the summit commanded the Campidano, now clear of fog, spread out before us, far as the eye could reach, in a broad level, broken only by some singular flat-topped hills in the foreground.
Striking and novel as this landscape appeared at the first glance, I confess that, at the moment, my attention was most directed backward on the track I had just followed. It was now some hours since I parted from my fellow-traveller. I had often listened for his horse's steps in the deep glen, where there was no seeing many hundred yards backwards or forwards; and though the present elevation commanded some points in the track, he did not appear. I was getting fidgetty, and the guide's replies to my inquiries did not tend to reassure me, for there are “malviventi” as well as “fuorusciti” in the wilds—a well known distinction—when, just as we were on the point of returning back, after half an hour's additional suspense, I got a glimpse of my friend trotting out of the woods close under the point of view. He, too, had lingered in the romantic glen after finishing his sketch.
We had now cleared the defiles of the Limbara, and, descending to the level of the plains, made up for lost time by galloping ventre à terre over the boundless waste. Here were no shady nooks, no forest masses, no fantastic growths, no grey crags, no bright-flowered thickets, so grouped as one might never see again, and tempting to linger. All the features were now on a broad scale; they were caught at a glance, and the few which broke the monotony of the scene were repeated again and again. But they were not without interest. The rivulet had expanded into a wide stream, making long bends through the deep loam of the grassy meads, and looking so cool and refreshing, that, but for the pebbly shoals in its bed, it was difficult to conceive the midsummer heats rendering these verdant plains desolate and pestilential.