From San Marino the road plunges at a break-neck pace.  We are now in the true Feltrian highlands, whence the Counts of Montefeltro issued in the twelfth century.  Yonder eyrie is San Leo, which formed the key of entrance to the duchy of Urbino in campaigns fought many hundred years ago.  Perched on the crest of a precipitous rock, this fortress looks as though it might defy all enemies but famine.  And yet San Leo was taken and re-taken by strategy and fraud, when Montefeltro, Borgia, Malatesta, Rovere, contended for dominion in these valleys.  Yonder is Sta.  Agata, the village to which Guidobaldo fled by night when Valentino drove him from his dukedom.  A little farther towers Carpegna, where one branch of the Montefeltro house maintained a countship through seven centuries, and only sold their fief to Rome in 1815.  Monte Coppiolo lies behind, Pietra Rubia in front:  two other eagles’ nests of the same brood.  What a road it is!

It beats the tracks on Exmoor.  The uphill and downhill of Devonshire scorns compromise or mitigation by detour and zigzag.  But here geography is on a scale so far more vast, and the roadway is so far worse metalled than with us in England—­knotty masses of talc and nodes of sandstone cropping up at dangerous turnings—­that only Dante’s words describe the journey:—­

  Vassi in Sanleo, e discendesi in Noli,
  Montasi su Bismantova in cacume
  Con esso i pie; ma qui convien ch’ uom voli.

Of a truth, our horses seemed rather to fly than scramble up and down these rugged precipices; Visconti cheerily animating them with the brave spirit that was in him, and lending them his wary driver’s help of hand and voice at need.

We were soon upon a cornice-road between the mountains and the Adriatic:  following the curves of gulch and cleft ravine; winding round ruined castles set on points of vantage; the sea-line high above their grass-grown battlements, the shadow-dappled champaign girdling their bastions mortised on the naked rock.  Except for the blue lights across the distance, and the ever-present sea, these earthy Apennines would be too grim.  Infinite air and this spare veil of spring-tide greenery on field and forest soothe their sternness.  Two rivers, swollen by late rains, had to be forded.  Through one of these, the Foglia, bare-legged peasants led the way.  The horses waded to their bellies in the tawny water.  Then more hills and vales; green nooks with rippling corn-crops; secular oaks attired in golden leafage.  The clear afternoon air rang with the voices of a thousand larks overhead.  The whole world seemed quivering with light and delicate ethereal sound.  And yet my mind turned irresistibly to thoughts of war, violence, and pillage.  How often has this intermediate land been fought over by Montefeltro and Brancaleoni, by Borgia and Malatesta, by Medici and Della Rovere!  Its contadini are robust men, almost statuesque in build, and beautiful of feature.  No wonder