Then we strike the Cremera, and exploring begins among its rocky gullies, up and down which the spirited, sure-footed horses scramble like chamois. Thick woods of cork-oak clothe their sides, and copses of a deciduous tree which I never saw in its summer dress of green, but which keeps its dead leaves all through the winter, a full suit of soft, pale brown contrasting with the dark evergreens. Among these woods grow all the wild-flowers of the long Roman spring from January to May--flowers that I never saw in bloom at the same time anywhere else. On banks overcanopied by faded boughs nodded myriads of snowdrops; farther on we held our horses' heads well up as they slipped, almost sitting, down the damp rocky clefts of a gorge whose sides were purple with violets, mingling their delicious odor, the sweetest and most sentimental of perfumes, with the fresh, geranium-like scent of the cyclamen, which here and there flung back its delicate pinkish petals like one amazed: then came acres of anemones--not our pale wind-shaken flower, but brave asters of half a dozen superb kinds. Up and down these passes we forced our way through interlacing branches, which drooped too low, until we had crossed the ridges on either side the Cremera, and gained the valley at the head of which is Isola Farnese, the rock-fortress supposed to occupy the site of the citadel of Etruscan Veii. It is not really an island, in spite of its name; only a bold peninsula, round whose base two rivulets flow and nearly meet. It is called a village, and so it is, with quite a population, but the great courtyard of the fifteenth-century castle contains them all, and the huts, pig-pens, kennels and coops which they seem to inhabit indiscriminately. Except where the bluff overlooks the valley, everything is closed and shut in by rocks and gorges, through one of which a lovely waterfall drips from a covert of boughs and shrubbery and wreathing ferns and creepers into a little stream, which with musical clamor rushes at a picturesque old mill: through another the road from the castle passes through a narrow issue to the outer world. And this stranded and shipwrecked fortress in the midst of so wild a scene is all that exists to mark where Veii stood, the powerful city which kept Rome at bay for ten years, and fell at length by stratagem! Its site was forgotten for nearly two thousand years, but in this century the discovery of some tombs revealed the secret. [Illustration: VEII, FROM THE CAMPAGNA.] [Illustration: TIVOLI.]