of the Piedmontese Coast . 157 



occasion I formed the whole of the company, and had a soUtary 

 dinner. Immediately on my arrival at Spezia I engaged a boat- 

 man, and was so well pleased with him that I continued to 

 employ him during the whole of my stay there. His name was 

 Giovanni Solese, and I can safely recommend him to any brother 

 naturalist who may be inclined to follow in my footsteps. He 

 was a middle-aged and short but active man, with fine dark 

 eyes, and a most intelligent and benevolent countenance. His 

 " moglie" kept a small shop, and let lodgings ; and in the 

 winter he worked at his other trade of a blacksmith. Solese^s mate 

 or fellow-boatman was, at first, his brother, a taller man, who wore 

 large ear-rings, and was rather taciturn ; but he was succeeded by 

 an ancient mariner, who told me he recollected '^Napoleone il 

 grande^' coming to Spezia, where it is well known he intended 

 to form a magnificent harbour for his Mediterranean fleet. I had 

 not much difficulty in arranging terms with the boatman ; and 

 I was well satisfied at having to pay only five francs per day for 

 the boat, men, and 100 fathoms of rope, being less than half of 

 what I paid at Genoa. My knowledge of the Italian language 

 being very rudimentary, 1 had of course at first some trouble in 

 explaining to the men the use of a dredge and the mode of 

 working it, and this 1 did chiefly by means of signs ; but, after 

 a day or two, my " cacchiate,^' " basta," and " tirate^^ were un- 

 derstood perfectly well ; and the men dredged and sifted the 

 soil without me on the alternate days, when I was obliged to 

 stay indoors to examine the produce of the preceding day, as 

 well as to clean and arrange the specimens. It was, I can 

 assure my readers, very hard work, from seven or eight in the 

 morning until five in the evening while dredging, and some- 

 times till near midnight indoors. My usual practice on dredg- 

 ing-days was, after working with and directing the men until 

 noon, to land on some part of the coast, bathe off the rocks, 

 and then walk back to the little town, conchologizing along the 

 shore on my way; the men in the meanwhile continuing to 

 dredge some previously explored part of the Gulf in accordance 

 with my directions. The modes of collecting which I adopted 

 were three : — 1st, by the dredge. Of these I took two with 

 me. The larger one was of iron, and twenty-two inches wide 

 at the mouth or opening, with an outer net or bag of rope-yarn 

 fastened to the mouth of the dredge by strips of raw hide, and 

 an inner and close-meshed net of twine. This dredge had a safety- 

 chain attached to it, to assist in disengaging the dredge in case 

 of its getting foul of a submarine rock. The other, or smaller 

 dredge, was only about a foot wide, and was made of galvanized 

 iron, with a flexible chain of the same material instead of the 

 usual arms riveted by bolts and nuts. It was made for me. 



