text:  Hence too the rudeness the pastoral simplicity and the occasional robber habits to be found in the population; so that to this day you may travel in many places for miles together in the plains and valleys without passing through a single town or village; for the towns still cluster on the mountain sides the houses nestling together on some scanty ledge with cliffs rising above them and sinking down abruptly below them the very 'congesta manu praeruptis oppida saxis' of Virgil's description which he even then called 'antique walls ' because they had been the strongholds of the primaeval inhabitants of the country and which are still inhabited after a lapse of so many centuries nothing of the stir and movement of other parts of Europe having penetrated into these lonely valleys and tempted the people to quit their mountain fastnesses for a more accessible dwelling in the plain