CHAPTER XVII.
THE STIGMATA 1224 The upper valley of the Arno forms in the very centre of Italy a country apart, the Casentino, which through centuries had its own life, somewhat like an island in the midst of the ocean.
The river flows out from it by a narrow defile at the south, and on all other sides the Apennines encircle it with a girdle of inaccessible mountains.[1] This plain, some ten leagues in diameter, is enlivened with picturesque villages, finely posted on hillocks at the base of which flows the stream; here are Bibbiena, Poppi, the antique Romena sung by Dante, the Camaldoli, and up there on the crest Chiusi, long ago the capital of the country, with the ruins of Count Orlando's castle.
The people are charming and refined; the mountains have sheltered them from wars, and on every side we see the signs of labor, prosperity, a gentle gayety.

At any moment we might fancy ourselves transported into some valley of the Vivarais or Provence.

The vegetation on the borders of the Arno is thoroughly tropical; the olive and the mulberry marry with the vine.

On the lower hill-slopes are wheat fields divided by meadows; then come the chestnuts and the oaks, higher still the pine, the fir, the larch, and above all the bare rock.
Among all the peaks there is one which especially attracts the attention; instead of a rounded and so to say flattened top, it uplifts itself slender, proud, isolated; it is the Verna.[2] One might think it an immense rock fallen from the sky.

It is in fact an erratic block set there, a little like a petrified Noah's ark on the summit of Mount Ararat.