From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young PeopleHedin, Sven Anders
General
From Pole to Pole: A Book for Young People
Hedin, Sven Anders
Geography -- Juvenile literature; Voyages and travels -- Juvenile literature
And what a commotion there is in all these narrow streets! Here comes a
peasant driving his asses weighed down with baskets of melons and
grapes. There a boy draws a handcart piled up with apricots, oranges,
and nuts. Here we see men and women from the Campagna outside Rome, clad
in their national costume, in which dirty white and red predominate, the
men with black slouched hats, the women with white kerchiefs over their
hair. They are of dark complexion, but on the cheeks of the younger ones
the roses appear through the bronze. The patricians, the noble Romans
who roll by lazily in fine carriages, are much fairer, and indeed the
ladies are often as pale as if they had just left the cloister or were
ready for the bier. Boys run begging after the carriage, and poor
mothers with small infants in their arms beseech only a small coin.
There are many in Rome who live from hand to mouth. But all are
cheerful, all are comely.
Now we reach the bridge of St. Angelo over the muddy Tiber, and before
us stands the massive round tower of the castle of St. Angelo, which the
Emperor Hadrian built 1800 years ago as a mausoleum for himself. On the
left is the piazza of St. Peter, which, with its surrounding buildings,
its curved arcades, St. Peter's Church and the Vatican, is one of the
grandest in the world. Between its constantly playing fountains has
stood for 300 years an obelisk which the Emperor Caligula brought from
Egypt to adorn Rome. It witnessed wonderful events long before the time
of Moses. At its foot the children of Israel sang the melodies of their
country during their servitude. It was a decoration of Nero's circus,
and saw thousands of Christian martyrs torn to pieces by Gallic hounds
and African lions; and still it lifts itself 80 feet into the air in a
single block, untouched by time and the strife of men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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