292 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AXD SPORT. 



rock -walls from the level plain. There are small 

 towns in them, and round these towns there is a good 

 deal of cultivation green lanes, with prickly hedges 

 that have even an English look, and large clumps of 

 trees, in which the date-palm is conspicuous. But 

 the greater part of the wide plains may be called 

 prairie-land. One of these, that of the great Poorally 

 valley, reminded us most forcibly of the desolate 

 miasmatic Eoman Campagna. In the evening, the 

 same grey poisonous mist rolled over it, which we 

 had watched from the heights of Tivoli, experienced 

 among the Pontine Marshes, and in which it is almost 

 death to sleep, unless the face be covered with a 

 thin cloth. The dull-blue buffaloes, with their long 

 retreating bent horns, which came over the gentle 

 undulations among the burnt -up grass and low 

 stunted trees, were the same as those which abound 

 on the Campagna, and were brought into Italy by 

 Lorenzo de' Medici ; and the few herdsmen to be met 

 with were scarcely stranger or wilder-looking than the 

 " golden-skinned " Massari, who, with their sheepskin 

 coats and long lances, are as picturesque as any Beluch 

 or Pawnee. It was only near to the Poorally river 

 that the scene became peculiarly Asiatic. Towards 

 the mouth it was a large sluggish stream ; the banks 

 being here fringed with reeds, there opening out into 

 large flat meadows, and again covered with small but 

 graceful trees lively with parroquets and smaller birds 

 of many brilliant hues. Grassy islets broke the glassy 



