314 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SEALER 



a score of mountain-tops I never before felt it in the face of day. Turning 

 from the serried world in the distance, I noticed that the peak on which I 

 stood bore a curious mark of man's work: the top, including an acre or two, 

 had clearly been levelled off and there was reason to believe that it had been 

 some sort of a stronghold. The wind was too fierce for clear seeing, so I only 

 note the possibility that this levelled summit had been the work of some 

 early people. I have never climbed an isolated hill in this region without 

 finding some faint trace of human occupancy upon it. Always before, how- 

 ever, these traces of man have been shown by some form of masonry however 

 rude. 



I found the mountain longer in the descent than in the ascent, for, al- 

 though the Italians, like their Roman ancestors, are good road-builders, 

 they will not build direct ways in a hilly region, as their forefathers did; 

 even for footpaths they generally keep easy grades, and in their devious ways 

 there are rarely any of those straight cut-off paths that people more accus- 

 tomed to be in a hurry are sure to make. The result was that while doubling 

 to and fro I saw the train for Florence clear away from the station, and had 

 to make my way to the city in a tram-car. The Italians take greatly to street- 

 cars; walking is to them the opprobrium of life, and even the poorest con- 

 tadino will spare the two cents necessary to take him on the car. These cars 

 move with an endless tooting of tin horns and a complicated system of super- 

 vision ; still they move, and this slow world seems a little quickened as they 

 pass. They make rather a blunt point for the edge of civilization's wedge, 

 but I dare say in time they will bring many another of our modern complica- 

 tions in their train ; so that this archaic, simple life will be driven away into 

 history. 



Vald'Arno:- 



March 9, 1882. 



I left the train at the pleasant old town of San Giovanni, in its day one of 

 the southern bulwarks of the Florentine Republic. It seems to have been a 

 prosperous little city, as indeed were all those towns of the fat old lake lands. 

 The broad main street has homes more beautiful than those of most small 

 Tuscan cities. There is a curious old podesta, or town hall, with a loggia on 

 three sides of it. 



I had to walk some miles to the country to find the guide who was to show 

 me the geological localities. My intelligent companion, the conservator of 

 the cabinet of San Marco, in Florence, did not know the ground we were 

 on in an intimate way, so we had to seek out a man who spent much of his 

 time in gathering fossils and who knew what could be found and where to 

 it. The road led into the intricate valleys of the low hills, and upon it 



