DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.785#0350
246 NORCHIA. [chap. xvi.
and left his queen to help herself. But I may not do the
place justice, for on two several years I have spent some
days there in the month of November, when the weather
was either extremely wet or lowering; and after a long
day's work, often in rain, always in mud, cold, and gloom,
the want of comfort at night may have been more severely
felt. I have visited it also in the height of summer, but being
caught in a thunder-storm, my reminiscences of the Vetralla
hostelry were not brightened. As guide to Norchia or
Bieda, I can recommend a civil obliging fellow called
Griacomo Zeppa, who lives hard by the osteria of Vetralla.
Norchia lies due N.W. from Vetralla. For the first
half of the way, where it traverses olive woods, the road
is practicable for the rude vehicles of the country, but
after that it dwindles to a mere path, or vanishes altogether
as you cross the wide desert heath, or dive into the deep
glens with which it is in every direction intersected.
Nothing can be more dreary than this scenery, on a dull
November day. The bare, treeless, trackless moor has
scarcely a habitation on its vast melancholy expanse,
which seems unbroken till one of its numerous ravines
suddenly opens at your feet. The mountains around,
which, in brighter weather, give beauty and grandeur to the
scene, are lost in cloud and mist; even Monte Fiascone
has shrouded his unaspiring crest. In the ravines is
always more or less of the picturesque ; yet their silence
and lonesomeness, their woods almost stript of foliage, and
dripping with moisture, have a chilling effect on the
traveller's spirits, little to be cheered by the sight of a
flock of sheep pent in a muddy fold, or of the smoke of
the shepherd's fire issuing from a neighbouring cave,
suggestive of savage comfort.
Little heeded we, however, the dulness of the weather.
Hastily we threaded these glens, eager to reach the famed
and left his queen to help herself. But I may not do the
place justice, for on two several years I have spent some
days there in the month of November, when the weather
was either extremely wet or lowering; and after a long
day's work, often in rain, always in mud, cold, and gloom,
the want of comfort at night may have been more severely
felt. I have visited it also in the height of summer, but being
caught in a thunder-storm, my reminiscences of the Vetralla
hostelry were not brightened. As guide to Norchia or
Bieda, I can recommend a civil obliging fellow called
Griacomo Zeppa, who lives hard by the osteria of Vetralla.
Norchia lies due N.W. from Vetralla. For the first
half of the way, where it traverses olive woods, the road
is practicable for the rude vehicles of the country, but
after that it dwindles to a mere path, or vanishes altogether
as you cross the wide desert heath, or dive into the deep
glens with which it is in every direction intersected.
Nothing can be more dreary than this scenery, on a dull
November day. The bare, treeless, trackless moor has
scarcely a habitation on its vast melancholy expanse,
which seems unbroken till one of its numerous ravines
suddenly opens at your feet. The mountains around,
which, in brighter weather, give beauty and grandeur to the
scene, are lost in cloud and mist; even Monte Fiascone
has shrouded his unaspiring crest. In the ravines is
always more or less of the picturesque ; yet their silence
and lonesomeness, their woods almost stript of foliage, and
dripping with moisture, have a chilling effect on the
traveller's spirits, little to be cheered by the sight of a
flock of sheep pent in a muddy fold, or of the smoke of
the shepherd's fire issuing from a neighbouring cave,
suggestive of savage comfort.
Little heeded we, however, the dulness of the weather.
Hastily we threaded these glens, eager to reach the famed