ITALIAN GARDENS OF THE RENAISSANCE 
seen all this we can go beyond the walls and explore 
the tract of country known as the Casentino or valley 
of the Upper Arno. A fiercely contested battle¬ 
ground it was in Dante’s time, when Arezzo was the 
great stronghold of the Ghibelline party, who from 
its walls waged war on the Guelfs of Florence, and 
this fair Aretine territory was laid waste by repeated 
invasions of the foe. 
It is hard to recall that warlike age in our own days 
when the Casentino was a rich and smiling district, 
fair at all times, but most of all in the early autumn 
when purple figs and scarlet pomegranates —pmi d 9 
oro —bang in clusters from the trees, and acacias and 
vines are touched with their first tints of gold. The 
vintage had already begun on the warm Septembei 
day when we left the gates of Arezzo and drove up 
Val d’Arno to visit the renowned mountain sanctuary 
of La Vernia. The vineyards on either side of the 
road were alive with bright groups of peasants gather¬ 
ing the first ripe grapes, and piling up the large wicker 
baskets into waggons harnessed with white oxen who 
stood lazily by, shaking their heads now and then to 
drive away the flies with the crimson tassels which 
hung over their foreheads. 
For three hours we followed the course of the 
Arno, which, “ not content with its hundred miles 
race,” here begins those interminable windings through 
the midst of this fair Tuscan land which Dante, in 
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