This promenade extends from Torre del Oro to the Duke of Montpensier’s palace. It is thickly shaded by oriental plane-trees, oaks, cypresses, willows, poplars, and other northern trees which the Andalusians admire as we should admire the palms and aloes in the fields of Piedmont and Lombardy. A large bridge spans the river and leads to the suburb of Triana from which one sees the first houses on the opposite bank. A long line of ships, _golettas_ (a species of light boat) and barks are on the river; and between the Torre del Oro and the Duke’s palace there is a constant coming and going of boats. The sun was setting. A crowd of ladies swarmed through the streets, troops of workmen crossed the bridge, the ships showed more signs of life, a band hidden among the trees began to play, the river became rose-coloured, the air was filled with the perfume of flowers, and the sky seemed to be aflame. [Illustration: CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO, ITALY.] CATHEDRAL OF ORVIETO JOHN ADDINGTON SYMONDS On the road from Siena to Rome, half-way between Ficulle and Viterbo, is the town of Orvieto. Travellers often pass it in the night-time. Few stop there, for the place is old and dirty and its inns are indifferent. But none who see it even from a distance can fail to be struck with its imposing aspect, as it rises from the level plain upon its mass of rock among the Apennines. Orvieto is built upon the first of those huge volcanic blocks which are found like fossils, embedded in the more recent geological formations of Central Italy, and which stretch in an irregular but unbroken line to the Campagna of Rome. Many of them, like that on which Civita Castellana is perched, are surrounded by rifts and chasms and fosses, strangely furrowed and twisted by the force of fiery convulsions. But their advanced guard, Orvieto, stands up definite and solid, an almost perfect cube, with walls precipitous to the north and south and east, but slightly sloping to the westward. At its foot rolls the Paglia, one of those barren streams which swell in winter with the snows and rains of the Apennines, but which in summer-time shrink up and leave bare beds of sand and pestilential canebrakes to stretch irregularly round their dwindled waters.