As the widening flood winds on through the beautiful plain, a broad sheet of water on the right spreads for miles to the foot of the mountains, whose jutting spurs form many a bay, cove and estuary.  It was in the small hours of a night of misty moonlight that our eyes, stretched wide with the new wonder of beholding classic ground, first caught sight of this smooth expanse gleaming pallidly amid the dark, blurred outlines of the landscape and trees.  The monotonous noise and motion of the train had put our fellow-travelers to sleep, and when it gradually ceased they did not stir.  There was no bustle at the little station where we stopped; a few drowsy figures stole silently by in the dim light, like ghosts on the spectral shore of Acheron; the whole scene was strangely unreal, phantasmal.  “What can it be?” we asked each other under our breaths.  “There is but one thing that it can be—­Lake Thrasimene.”  And so it was.  Often since, both by starlight and daylight, we have seen that watery sheet of fatal memories, but it never wore the same shadowy yet impressive aspect as on our first night-journey from Florence to Rome.

Not far from here one leaves the train for Perugia, seated high on a bluff amid walls and towers.  We had been told a good deal of the terrors of the way—­how so steep was the approach that at a certain point horses give out and carriages must be dragged up by oxen.  It was with some surprise, therefore, that we saw ordinary hotel omnibuses and carriages waiting at the station.  But we did not allow ourselves to feel any false security:  by and by we knew the tug must come.  We set off by a wide, winding road, uphill undoubtedly, but smooth and easy:  however, this was only the beginning; and as it grew steeper and steeper, we waited in trepidation for the moment when the heavy beasts should be hitched on to haul us up the acclivity.  We crawled up safely and slowly between orchards of olive trees, which will grow wherever a goat can set its foot:  beneath us the great fertile vale of Umbria spread like a lake, the encircling mountains, which had looked like a close chain from below, unlinking themselves to reveal gorges and glimpses of other valleys.  Thus by successive zigzags we mounted the broad turnpike-road, now directly under the fortifications, now farther off, until we saw them close above us, with the old citadel and the new palace.  And now surely the worst had come, but the carnage turned a sharp corner, showing two more zigzags, forming a long acute angle which carried us smoothly to the rocky plateau on which the city stands, and we bowled in through the old gate-way at a round trot, with the usual cracking of whips and rattling and jingling of harness which announces the arrival of travelers at minor places on the Continent.