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Updated: June 22, 2025
Then, more silent in the mind through their influence, I went down past the speech and companionship of the springs of the Serchio, and the chestnut trees were redolent of evening all round.
Dante, who spent some time in Lucca, and there loved the gentle Gentucca, whose name so fortunately chimed with that of the city, speaks of the Volto Santo in Inferno, xxi. 48, when in the eighth circle of Hell, over the lake of boiling pitch, the devils cry "... Qui non ha luogo il Santo Volto: Qui si nuota altrimenti che nel Serchio."
The driver is quite aware of this, and his long whip, which he has cracked at intervals all the way from Lucca would reach the grinning, white-toothed little vagabonds well; but he the driver grins too, and spares them. Together they all mount the zigzag mountain-pass, that turns short off from the right bank of the valley of the Serchio, toward Corellia.
But Hannibal anticipated him. The passage of the Apennines was accomplished without much difficulty, at a point as far west as possible or, in other words, as distant as possible from the enemy; but the marshy low grounds between the Serchio and the Arno were so flooded by the melting of the snow and the spring rains, that the army had to march four days in water, without finding any other dry spot for resting by night than was supplied by piling the baggage or by the sumpter animals that had fallen.
An imperceptible ascent conducts from the town of Lucca towards its baths; and you may expect, in about three hours, to have accomplished its sixteen miles. The road follows the long windings and beautiful valleys of the Serchio, of which, harmless as it looks, we read on all the bridges records of its occasional violence, and of their repeated destruction.
Each tiny stream and brawling water-course even mere little humble rills that dried up in summer now rushed downward over rocks and stones blackened with moss, to pour themselves into the river Serchio. In the forest the turf was carpeted with yellow leaves, carried hither and thither by the winds.
The counts, Carlo and Deifobo, came with a good force, and being joined by all that could be spared from the army, which, under the marquis of Ferrara, held in check the duke of Calabria, proceeded toward Pisa, to meet Signor Roberto, who was with his troops near the river Serchio, and who, though he had expressed his intention of awaiting their arrival, withdrew to the camp at Lunigiana, which he had quitted upon coming into the Pisan territory, while Count Carlo recovered all the places that had been taken by the enemy in that district.
The chamberlain getting the Duke into conversation on the subject of the frontier, learned from him that a certain highly romantic gorge, opening out from the valley of the Serchio, and called Turrite Cava, which he pretended to take an interest in as a place fitted for a picnic, was within the Modenese frontier.
If it did, I think there is a little question on 'why should habit turn sacred? which would somewhat confound and pose you, and pose also, for that matter, every pedant that ever went blind and crook-backed over books, or took ivory for horn. And there is an end of it. Argue it with whom you will. Look you out 'Garfagnana, district of, Valley of Serchio' in the index.
According to Toscanelli, Economia rurale nella Provincia di Pisa, p. 8, note one of the most complete, curious, and instructive pictures of rural life which exists in any literature the white poplar, Populus alba, attains in the valley of the Serchio a great height, with a mean diameter of two feet, in twenty years.
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