Some of the cork-trees were fine specimens, of great age. Several I measured in a rough way by embracing their trunks with extended arms. This, repeated four or five times, gave a circumference of twenty or twenty-five feet. The bark was ten inches thick. While so employed I was startled by a wild boar rushing by me into the thickets. The cork wood gradually thinned into scattered clumps on the slopes of the hills, and the winding valley, five or six miles long, was abruptly terminated by a bold mamelon, or green mound, covered with dwarf heath or turf; so shorn and smooth it appeared, probably from being pastured, in immediate contrast with the shaggy sides of the mountain glen. The horsetrack, avoiding this obstacle, led up the eastern acclivity of the glen, and the summit commanded the Campidano, now clear of fog, spread out before us, far as the eye could reach, in a broad level, broken only by some singular flat-topped hills in the foreground.
Striking and novel as this landscape appeared at the first glance, I confess that, at the moment, my attention was most directed backward on the track I had just followed. It was now some hours since I parted from my fellow-traveller. I had often listened for his horse's steps in the deep glen, where there was no seeing many hundred yards backwards or forwards; and though the present elevation commanded some points in the track, he did not appear. I was getting fidgetty, and the guide's replies to my inquiries did not tend to reassure me, for there are “_malviventi_” as well as “_fuorusciti_” in the wilds—a well known distinction—when, just as we were on the point of returning back, after half an hour's additional suspense, I got a glimpse of my friend trotting out of the woods close under the point of view. He, too, had lingered in the romantic glen after finishing his sketch.
We had now cleared the defiles of the Limbara, and, descending to the level of the plains, made up for lost time by galloping _ventre à terre_ over the boundless waste. Here were no shady nooks, no forest masses, no fantastic growths, no grey crags, no bright-flowered thickets, so grouped as one might never see again, and tempting to linger. All the features were now on a broad scale; they were caught at a glance, and the few which broke the monotony of the scene were repeated again and again. But they were not without interest. The rivulet had expanded into a wide stream, making long bends through the deep loam of the grassy meads, and looking so cool and refreshing, that, but for the pebbly shoals in its bed, it was difficult to conceive the midsummer heats rendering these verdant plains desolate and pestilential.