all this soil _creta_; but it seems to be less like a chalk than a
marl, or _marna_. It is always washing away into ravines and
gullies, exposing the roots of trees, and rendering the tillage of
the land a thankless labour. One marvels how any vegetation has the
faith to settle on its dreary waste, or how men have the patience,
generation after generation, to renew the industry, still beginning,
never ending, which reclaims such wildernesses. Comparing Monte
Oliveto with similar districts of cretaceous soil--with the country,
for example, between Pienza and San Quirico--we perceive how much is
owed to the perseverance of the monks whom Bernard Tolomei planted
here. So far as it is clothed at all with crop and wood, this is
their service.

At last we climb the crowning hill, emerge from a copse of oak,
glide along a terraced pathway through the broom, and find ourselves
in front of the convent gateway. A substantial tower of red brick,
machicolated at the top and pierced with small square windows,
guards this portal, reminding us that at some time or other the
monks found it needful to arm their solitude against a force
descending from Chiusure. There is an avenue of slender cypresses;
and over the gate, protected by a jutting roof, shines a fresco of
Madonna and Child. Passing rapidly downwards, we are in the
courtyard of the monastery, among its stables, barns, and
out-houses, with the forlorn bulk of the huge red building,
spreading wide, and towering up above us. As good luck ruled our
arrival, we came face to face with the Abbate de Negro, who
administers the domain of Monte Oliveto for the Government of Italy,
and exercises a kindly hospitality to chance-comers. He was standing
near the church, which, with its tall square campanile, breaks the
long stern outline of the convent. The whole edifice, it may be
said, is composed of a red-brick inclining to purple in tone, which
contrasts not unpleasantly with the lustrous green of the cypresses,
and the glaucous sheen of olives. Advantage has been taken of a
steep crest; and the monastery, enlarged from time to time through
the last five centuries, has here and there been reared upon
gigantic buttresses, which jut upon the _balze_ at a sometimes giddy
height.

The Abbate received us with true courtesy, and gave us spacious
rooms, three cells apiece, facing Siena and the western mountains.
There is accommodation, he told us, for three hundred monks; but
only three ar