Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. AN EXCURSION. In the autumn of 1836 a violent flood caused considerable damage in the country. Giusti was then residing in Pescia, and he made an expedition into the mountains to visit the scene of the disaster, -which he describes in a letter to his old friend and former schoolmaster, Andrea Francioni. DEAR FRANCIONI, Pescia, 20th October, 1836.
This semi-serious month is made for me, who am by nature half melancholy, half comic; it drives me from my books, and gives me a rage for walking. I have rambled over all the neighbouring heights, I have again been through all the bye-paths across the fields, and in the woods of the country round, and I have spent long half-hours gazing at the fine points of view which present themselves at every turn, on the summits of these hills, covered with olives and chesnuts.
So heavy a rain fell in the night of the first Sunday of October, that the shallowest brooks were converted into torrents, and there was such a storm of thunderand lightning, that it seemed as if the end of the world were near at hand. There was little or no injury done here, and we escaped, thank God, with no further damage than could be set to rights by some few repairs in the walls or in the sides of the ditches. Those who had to undergo the greatest damage and misfortunes were the poor Lucchese, for whose destruction the Lima and other torrents conspired, after the manner of the Holy Alliance.1 The report of the terrible havoc caused by these rivers soon spread, and inspired many with a desire to go and see. There are some who blame this rage for sight-seeing which sent us to the scene of the calamity, as a savage and stupid curiosity; I think philanthropists ought not to shun the sight of pain, nor occasions which excite their feelings of …