Italian Highways and Byways from a Motor Car

hundred kilometres to the west. In fact the road through Nervi and Recco is finer, if anything,

aveller by the high road has decidedly the best of it, but there are alwa

he Grand Hotel gives access to the gardens of the villa of the Marchese Gropollo

and populous town, but

y of San Fruttoso, a picturesque and solitary conventual establishment in whose chapel are many tombs of the Dorias, all with good Gothic sculptures. In the convent of Cervara, en route to the village of Portofino on the e

ntain fashion though beautifully graded and kept. At almost any turning one is likely to meet a great lumbering char-a-banc crowded with tourists, with five, six or eight horses caparisoned like a circus pageant, with bells around their necks,

of its class. Lace-making and coral-fishing are the occupations of the inhabitants who do not live off of exploiting the

the Levantine Riviera, quite as well as French or English. The "Tea-Shop"

endide, once a villa of the accepted Ligurian order, and a less pretentious, more characteristic, Albergo Delfino lower down on the quay. The arms of the l

o are a half a dozen more or less modern villas of questionable architec

astel Paraggi, the property of a gentleman prosaically named Brown,

this way. The hotel curiously enough seems none the worse for it; it is good, reasonable in price and conveniently situated on the quay, overlooking a picturesque granite tower built up from a foundation sunk in the waters of the Mediterranean. The Corsair Dragutte, a buccaneer of romantic days, came along and plundered these

ful variety between villa gardens and vineyards. On the slopes above are dott

of round and pointed arches, and columns of all orders. The effect is undeniably good. Th

t is indicative of the style of building of the feudal time in these parts. Decidedly the best things of Chiavari are its house fronts, and some crazy old streets running back from the main thoroughfares. There are some slate qu

ily, who owned to Popes, Cardinals and soldiers in the gallant days of the Genoese Republic. Sestri-Levante, a half a dozen kilometres beyond Chiavari, is

sixty kilometres in all from Sestri to Spezia. The highroad now leaves the coast to wind

he sea, the distant snow-capped summits of the mountains to the

hroad runs down through the valley of the Vara, until finally at Spezia,

omes from, at least, the wine the praises of which were sung by Boccaccio "as the paragon o

e gold-lace and blue-cloth individuals of the "service" dominate everyth

of itself is no drawback. Across the street, in a vacant store, you may lodge your automobile for two francs a night, or for one franc if you tell the ambitious and obliging little man who runs it that he demands too much. He is really the best thing we found in Spezia. We had run out of gasoline in entering the city, the long run down h

environment, but they are all modern and have, none of

ill graven above its entrance door to recall the fact that the device of the Milanese nobles was a viper, and that their natures, too,

scribed in ancient times by Strabo, the geographer, and by Persius. Little of i

is as stiff a couple of hair-pin turns as one will remember ever having come across suddenly in his travels. They are not formidable

just east of Spezia divided the Gen

e per cam

e parta da

, "Par

tification walls of feudal days. It is not for this, though, that one lingers at Sarzana. The Bonapartes were originally descended from Sarzana ancestry. It was proven

nd tower, its moat and its later Renaissance g

marble of Carrara goes out into the world from thousands of ateliers to thousands of resting places but it all comes from this great white mountainside in the Apennines which has made the region famous and rich. This little Tuscan town

centre of an uproar that would be maddening if one had to live in it; but it is all very interesting to th

ed marble; the débris merely of the great blocks which have, in

hillsides round about have been burrowed to their bowels in taking out this untold

out and slicing off the great blocks. Ten thousand, at least, find their livelihood dependent upon the industry, an

agreed that the Chateau, in base rococo style, (now the public administrative buildings), a curiosity worth seeing. Massa has a Napoleonic memory hanging over it, too, in that it was once the residence of the

of bad road in Europe as this awful fifty kilometres, for it continues all the way to Lucca and Livorno. The vast amount of traffic drawn by ten head of oxen at a t

at the blood-thirsty, battling Lorenzo di Medici besieged in 1482; and that the ancient bronze font in the Baptistery was the work of Donatello. We were glad that Massa and Pietrasanta were counted in, as they should be by everyone passing thi

seaside resort for dwellers in the Tuscan towns; but a historic s

s of Shelley and Ouida, the Marquise de la Ramée. There is a monument, erected to Shelley in 1894, commemor

hich was more than sufficient to keep the wolf from the door. She died miserable and alone however. Ouida was a more real, more charitable person than she was given credit for being. She didn't like the English, and Americans she liked still less, but she loved the Italians. Whose business wa

may not be the most luxuriant in Ita

the road still bad-on to Livorno, turning to the

till sunk in its marsh Lucca was already old, and filled with a commercial importance which to-day finds its echo in the distribution of the Lucca olive

the city to his sister Eliza Bacciochi, with the title of Princess of Lucca. She was a real benefactress to the country, but with the fa

ce are shipped the marbles of Carrara, the oil of Lucca, the wines of Chianti and

s antiquated and is the most co

pain Cosmo II, Duke of Livorno, invited t

approved of it apparently, as he called the founding and p