A few shaggy, wild-looking cattle may be seen wandering over the flat waste, muddy to the shoulders from wading in the soft swamps.

A scene of more utter desolation it is hardly possible to meet with in such close neighbourhood to a living city.
Paolina shivered, and drew her little grey cloak more closely around her shoulders; not from cold, though a bleak wind was blowing across the marshes.

She was warmed by walking; but the aspect of the scene before her almost frightened the Venetian girl by the savagery of its desolation.
The raised causeway, however, keeps on its course amid the low-lying marshes on either side of it; and presently the peculiar form of outline belonging to a forest composed entirely of the maritime pine is distinguishable on the horizon to the left.

The road quickly draws nearer to it; and the large, heavy, velvet-like masses of dark verdure become visible.

In a forest such as the famous Pineta, consisting of the maritime pine only, the lines, especially when seen at a distance, have more of horizontal and less of perpendicular direction than in any other assemblage of trees.