CIVITÀ BAGNOREA.
THE TIBER, FROM ORTE.
We stopped to lunch at Viterbo, a town more closely connected with the history of the Papacy than any except Rome itself, and full of legends and romantic associations: it is dirty and dilapidated, and has great need of all its memories. Being but eight miles from Montefiascone, we called for a bottle of the fatal Est, which we had tasted once at Augsburg, where the host of the Three Moors has it in his cellar, in honor perhaps of the departed Fugger family, whose palace has become his hotel: there we had found it delicious—a wine as sweet as cordial, with a soul of fire and a penetrating but delicate flavor of its own—how different from the thin, sour stuff they brought us in the long-necked, straw-covered flask, nothing to attest its relationship to the generous juice at the Three Moors except the singular, unique flavor! After this little disappointment we left Viterbo, and drove on through the same sort of scenery, which seemed to grow more and more beautiful in the rosy light of the sinking sun. But it is hard to tell, for nothing makes a journey so beautiful as to know that Rome is the goal.
BORGHETTO.
As the last rays were flushing the hill-tops we came in sight of Orte, with its irregular lines of building clinging to the sides of its precipitous cliff in such eyrie-wise that it is difficult to say what is house and what is rock, and whether the arched passages with which it is pierced are masonry or natural grottoes; and there was the Tiber—already the yellow Tiber—winding through the valley as far as eye could follow. Here we waited for the train, which was ten minutes late, and tried to make up for lost time by leaving our luggage, all duly marked and ready, standing on the track. We soon began to greet familiar sites as we flitted by: the last we made out plainly was Borghetto, a handful of houses, with a ruined castle keeping watch on a hill hard by: then twilight gathered, and we strained our eyes in vain for the earliest glimpse of Mount Soracte, and night came down before we could descry the first landmarks of the Agro Romano, the outposts of our excursions, the farm-towers we knew by name, the farthest fragments of the aqueducts. But it was not so obscure that we could not discern the Tiber between his low banks showing us the way, the lights quivering in the Anio as the train rushed over the bridge; and when at length we saw against the clear night-sky a great dark barrier stretching right and left, we knew that the walls of Rome were once more before us: in a moment we had glided through with slackening speed, and her embrace enfolded us again.
The Tiber, winding as it does like a great artery through the heart of Rome, is seldom long either out of sight or mind. One constantly comes upon it in the most unexpected manner, for there is no river front to the city. There is a wide open space on the Ripetta—a street which runs from the Piazza del Popolo, at the head of the foreign quarter, to remoter parts—where a broad flight of marble steps descends to the level of the flood, and a ferry crosses to the opposite bank: looking over at the trees and fields, it is like the open country, yet beyond are St. Peter's and the Vatican, and the whole of what is known as the Leonine City.