eBooks Base 2000

The country
was fertile, presenting, on each side of the road, vines trained on
fig-trees; wheat-fields and olives, in greater abundance than any other
product. On our right, with a considerable width of plain between, was
the bending ridge of hills that shut in the Roman army, by its close
approach to the lake at Passignano. In perhaps half all hour's drive, we
reached the little bridge that throws its arch over the Sanguinetto, and
alighted there. The stream has but about a yard's width of water; and
its whole course, between the hills and the lake, might well have been
reddened and swollen with the blood of the multitude of slain Romans.
Its name put me in mind of the Bloody Brook at Deerfield, where a company
of Massachusetts men were massacred by the Indians.
The Sanguinetto flows over a bed of pebbles; and J----- crept under the
bridge, and got one of them for a memorial, while U----, Miss Shepard,
and R----- plucked some olive twigs and oak leaves, and made them into
wreaths together,--symbols of victory and peace.


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