[111] She was no more than sixty-two at that time.—­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