Other public mode of transit there is none; and therefore,
not having patience for the diligence, I had to travel in a private
conveyance, and if there had been any one else going from the fair to
Rome, which there was not, they must perforce have done the same. As to
the details of the journey, and the scenery through which you pass, are
they not written in the book of Murray, wherein whoso likes may read
them? It is enough for me to note one or two facts which tell their own
story. Throughout the forty and odd miles of the road I traversed, I
never passed through a single village or town, with the exception of
Tivoli; and between that town and Rome, a distance of some twenty miles,
never even caught sight of one. After Tivoli, when the road enters the
mountains, there are a dozen small towns or so, all perched on the
summits of high hills, under which the road winds in passing. Detached
houses or cottages there are, as a rule, none--certainly not half a dozen
in all--the whole way along. There was little appearance of traffic
anywhere. A few rough carts, loaded with charcoal or wood for the Roman
markets; strings of mules, almost buried beneath high piles of brushwood,
which were swung pannier-wise across their backs; and a score of peasant-
farmers mounted on shaggy cart-horses, and jogging towards the fair,
constituted the way-bill of the road.
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