CHAP. XXVII.
The Valley narrows.—Romantic Glen.—Al fresco Meal.—Forest of Cork Trees.—Salvator Rosa Scenery.—Haunts of Outlaws.—Their Atrocities.—Anecdotes of them in a better Spirit.—The Defile in the Mountains—Elevated Plateau.—A Night March.—Arrival at Tempio, the Capital of Gallura.—Our Reception.
After following the course of the Liscia for about an hour, we struck up a lateral valley, the water of which stood in pools, separated by pebbly shallows, but overhung by drooping willows, and fringed with a luxuriant growth of ferns and rank weeds. The hills were covered with dense woods, intersected by rare clearings and inclosures on their slopes. Here and there stood a solitary stazza, as the stations or homesteads of the few resident farmers are here called. We observed that they were generally fixed on rising ground. At some of these the courier stopped, his errands consisting not in the delivery of letters, that office appearing to be a sinecure in this wild track, but in leaving packets of coffee, sugar, &c., and, in one instance, a cotton dress,—commodities none of which had probably been taxed to the Customs at La Madelena.
The valley narrowed, and its water quickened into a lively trout stream, gurgling over a rocky bed, bordered on one side by thick underwood, feathering down to its edge. The myrtles here were thirty feet high, and, blended with the tall heath (Erica arborea), the branching arbutus, the cistus, lentiscus, with scores of other shrubs, formed thickets of as exquisite beauty as any we had seen in Corsica. The stream on its hither bank washed a narrow margin of grass beneath the woods. Here we rested our horses and dined. Wayfarers in such countries generally select the right spot for their halt. This was a delightful one, and we fared well enough on the contents of a basket provided at La Madelena. Such rough al fresco meals, the uncertainty when you will get another, even when and where your ride will end, the living in the present, with fresh air and sunshine, and perpetual though gradual change of scene, with the absence of all care about the future—these form the charms of such travelling as ours.
Again in the saddle, we soon afterwards entered a forest of magnificent cork trees, festooned with wild vines, relieving the sombre tints of the forest by the bright colours of their fading leaves. It hung on a mountain's side, and the gloomy depth of shade became deeper and deeper, as, after a while, the dusk of evening came on, and we began to thread the gorges which led to the summit of the pass.
Salvator Rosa himself might have studied the wild scenery of Sardinia to advantage. If I recollect right, we are informed that he did. Nor would it require much effort of the imagination to add life to the picture in forms suited to its savage aspect,—to conjure up the grim bandit bursting from the thickets on his prey, or lurking behind the rock for the hour of vengeance on his enemy. Such scenes are by no means imaginary.
A SALVATOR ROSA SCENE.
Even now, numbers of the fuorusciti find shelter in the fastnesses of the Gallura; the remnant of bands once so formidable that they spread terror through the whole province, bidding defiance alike to the law and the sword. Only within the present century the government has succeeded in quelling their ferocity, but not without desperate resistance to the troops employed, eighty of whom were destroyed by a party of the bandits in a single attack.