The one lasting trace of civilisaion was the road which the Romans road-building at least never to be" defeated—drove "across the marshes, dend straight, carried over the canals by" innunierable little bridges, the Roman arches beneath them as solid as ever, and flanked, by a double row of willows, which helped to support the embankment of the road and formed a tunnel over it, the end of which for ever receded "awe pedalled wearily along. There is, perhaps, in cycling Hothing more wearisome than a Tong, straight, flat road. An uphill climb has at feast the promise of a coast downhill presently. Even a head wind, calling out "all one's strength and endurance, gives one fa fierce sence of strife and mastery. longed perversely for the Pontine flats. And always they remain og one of the eeriest, most repellant, most, fascinating seen that memory holds. Littoria will ive homes and. employment hundreds of war veterans, the road will be widened and smoothed, and limousines and lorries will' roar along it. Which is, no doubt, all to the good, but somehow one feels [sorry that' the engineers have jumped. Appii forum's pedicel ed doors, the sickly mala }swamps, the dead cock at Mesa, the frogs' defiant chorus, these are the true Pontine Marshes, recalling the days when still there were things that man could not. do and places that he must only visit fearfully.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.