- ED.
[112] To present the calumet is an offer of peace and amity among the
aborigines of North America and to refuse it is regarded as the
greatest insult.
[113] Frye gives only the initial of the name, which I have completed from
the Almanach de Gotha, 1818. - ED.
[114] The Interior of the Convent of the Capucini was first painted by
Granet in the year 1811. None of the numerous replicas are in the
Louvre, but there is one in London (Buckingham Palace) and one at
Chatsworth. - ED.
[115] The author may have meant "old Herodotus." - ED.
[116] Virgil, Georg., II, 146. - ED.
CHAPTER XV
APRIL-JULY, 1818
Journey from Florence to Pisa and from thence by the Appennines to
Genoa - Massa-Carrara - Genoa - Monuments and works of art - The
Genoese - Return to Florence - Journey from Florence through Bologna and
Ferrara to Venice - Monument to Ariosto in Ferrara - A description of
Venice - Padua - Vicenza - Verona - Cremona - Return to Milan - The Scala
theatre - Verona again - From Verona to Innspruck.
It is the custom for most travellers going to Genoa to embark on board of a
felucca at Spezia, which lies on the sea coast, not far from Sarzana: but
I preferred to go by land, and I cannot conceive why anyone should expose
himself to the risks, inconveniences and delays of a sea passage, when it
is so easy to go by land thro' the Appennines. I started accordingly the
following morning, mounted on a mule, and attended by a muleteer with
another mule to convey my portmanteau. I found this journey neither
dangerous nor difficult, but on the contrary agreeable and romantic. The
road is only a bridle road. I paid forty-eight franks for my two mules and
driver, and started at seven in the morning from Sarzana. The wild
appearance of the Appennines, the aweful solitudes and the highly
picturesque points of view that present themselves at the various
sinuosities of the mountains and valleys; the view of the sea from the
heights that tower above the towns of Oneglia and Sestri Levante, rendered
this journey one of the most interesting I have ever made. I stopped to
dine at Borghetto and brought to the night at Sestri Levante, breakfasted
the next morning at Rapallo, and arrived the same evening at four o'clock
in Genoa. Borghetto is a little insignificant town situate in a narrow
valley surrounded on all sides by the lofty crags of the Appennines. Sestri
Levante is a long and very straggling town, part of it being situated on
the sea shore, and the other part on the gorge of the mountain descending
towards the sea beach; so that the former part of the town lies nearly at
right angles with the latter, with a considerable space intervening. The
road for the last four miles between Borghetto and Sestri Levante is a
continual descent. The inn was very comfortable and good at Sestri Levante.
The beginning of the road between Sestri and Rapallo is on the beach till
near Rapallo, when it strikes again into the mountains and is of
considerable ascent. Rapallo is a very neat pretty place, situate on an
eminence commanding a fine view of the sea. The greater part of the road
between Rapallo and Genoa is on the sea-coast, but cut along the mountains
which here form a bluff with the sea. Villas, gardens and vineyards line
the whole of this route and nothing can be more beautiful. The neatness of
the villas and the abundance of the population form a striking contrast to
the wild solitudes between Sarzana and Sesto, where (except at Borghetto)
there is not a house to be seen and scarce a human creature to be met, and
where the eagle seems to reign alone the uncontrolled lord of the creation.
GENOA, 23rd April.
The view of Genoa from the sea is indisputably the best; for on entering by
land from the eastern side, the ramparts are so lofty as to intercept the
fine view the city would otherwise afford. From the sea side it rises in
the shape of an amphitheatre; a view therefore taken from the sea gives the
best idea of its grandeur and of the magnificence of its buildings, for
everybody on beholding this grand spectacle must allow that this city well
deserves its epithet of Superba.
I observe in my daily walks on the Esplanade a number of beautiful women.
The Genoese women are remarkable for their beauty and fine complexions.
They dress generally in white, and their style of dress is Spanish; they
wear the mezzara or veil, in the management of which they display much
grace and not a little coquetry. Instead of the fan exercise recommended to
women by the Spectator, the art of handling the mezzara might be
reduced to a manual and taught to the ladies by word of command.
I put up at the house of a Spanish lady on the Piazza St Siro, and here
for four livres a day I am sumptuously boarded and lodged. There are
three principal streets in Genoa, viz., Strada Nuova, Balbi, and
Nuovissima. Yet these three streets may be properly said to form but one,
inasmuch as they lie very nearly in a right line. These streets are broad
and aligned with the finest buildings in Genoa. This street or streets are
the only ones that can be properly called so, according to the idea we
usually attach to the word. The others deserve rather the names of lanes
and alleys, tho' exceedingly well paved and aligned with excellent houses
and shops. In fact the streets Nuova, Nuovissima and Balbi are the
only ones thro' which carriages can pass. The others are far too narrow to
admit of the passage of carriages. The houses on each side of them are of
immense height, being of six or seven stories, which form such a shade as
effectually to protect those who walk thro' these alleys from the rays of
the sun.