264 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Ill passing through the streets of Florence we often see 

 houses bearing over the door, or on the front, some inscription 

 in gilt letters, such as " Here lived and died the prince of 

 tragedy, Alfieri ;" " Here dwelt Machiavelli ;" " Here lived 

 Dante ;" while the house of Michael Angelo is still preserved 

 just as it was when that great artist lived in it, with the furni- 

 ture and the decorations preserved, and it now belongs to one 

 of his descendants. It is open to visitors two or three times a 

 week. 



About ten miles out of Florence we saw a cattle-show, held 

 in a beautiful grove, near the banks of the Arno. The cattle, 

 all of a dark iron gray, the black predominating on some parts, 

 and on others the white a little, but all uniform, with lofty 

 branching horns, decorated with colored ribbons and variegated 

 tassels, came in from considerable distances, and we had a 

 good opportunity to see and admire them. 



At Leghorn we had a bath in the Mediterranean, and a taste 

 of the little miserable oysters, the best the sea afforded, but 

 infinitely inferior to our own. In fact they were quite detest- 

 able, but it had been so long since we had been able to get 

 oysters of any kind, that we made up our minds to worry them 

 down. 



It had been our desire to take the inland route from Florence 

 to Rome, and so on to Naples, but the state of the country was 

 so unsettled and so infested with banditti, that we were inva- 

 riably advised to abandon our intention and to go by another 

 way, round by sea. I had heard the Earl of Derby remark, in 

 the English House of Lords, that there were, at that time, no 

 less than sixteen thousand of these roving bandits in Italy, 

 and as wc had no time to bother with them, we concluded that 

 " prudence was the better part of valor," and so took the slow 

 sailing steamer Sicilia, directly for Naples, running down in 

 sight of Elba, Corsica and Sardinia, and of the great dome of 

 St. Peters at Rome, distinctly seen, though twenty miles off. 

 The time glided quickly away, and we at last came in sight of 

 Ischia and Procida, and that great smoking chimney of the earth, 

 Vesuvius, and not long after rounded about into the grand and 

 beautiful Bay of Naples, passing Baia) and Pozzuoli, and soon 

 coming to anchor near the shore. 



