840 
STATE AGEICULTUEAL SOCIETY. 
conceived, although somewhat familiar with Alpine scenery. Awful gorges, 
more than a thousand feet deep, with roaring torents thundering and foam¬ 
ing over their rocky beds, rock-ribbed mountains, spotted here and there 
with stunted evergreens, and lifting their icy peaks above the clouds, the 
narrow road winding now upward, then* downward along the very edge of 
yawning chasms that seemed bottomless,—this will convey a faint impres. 
sion of what it is impossible for any pen to describe. Just before reaching the 
very crest of the mountains, I was overtaken by a heavy _^snow storm, which 
not only filled my path, but so blinded my sight that but for the cut wall of 
snow and ice on one or the other side, by which my steps were guided up 
the zigzag way, I should have been literally “snowed in, ” and forced to 
burrow out on the coming of the Alpine spring. At Chiavenna I took the 
stage for Colico, from which point I sailed down the beautiful Lake Como to 
Como, and thence, by rail, went to Milan, drawn thither by its several in¬ 
stitutions of learning, its art collections, and its great cathedral. A grand 
and beautiful city. 
From Milan I journeyed to Pavia, on a visit to the ancient university, one 
of the best in Italy, to Alessandria through the intervening Piedmontese 
country, beautiful with smiling fields of grass, Indian corn, wheat, rye, and 
and flax, with budding vineyards and orchards of mulberry, to Asti, capi¬ 
tal of the ancient republic, and finally, to the beautiful city of Turin, late 
capital of Italy and home of Victor Emanuel; where some days were very 
satisfactorily spent in the old University, the academy of sciences, the mil¬ 
itary academy and the veterinary school. 
My next point was Genoa, that magnificent old city of palaces, more an¬ 
cient than Rome, long the seat of one of the most opulent and powerful re¬ 
publics of the middle ages, birth place of the discoverer of the new world, 
and still a flourishing town of over half a million inhabitants, and among the 
most wealthy, prosperous and progressive of all the Italian cities. No city of 
Europe interested me more. It is built upon a series of hills so very steep 
that the narrow, winding streets, with their numberless ups and downs can be 
only traversed on foot, and even thus only with a severe test of the legs. 
Many of them are actual flights of stone steps. Here and there one finds a 
scraggy, tough-looking little donkey, waiting at some door to be relieved of 
his monstrous burden of hard and gnarly wood, but otherwise, except on the 
level street along the quay, or following the course of some of the narrow 
valleys, where strong-wheeled vehicles may be seen, one meets with no 
means of locomotion other than such as constitute his own understanding. 
The day of my arrival was spent in taking a general survey, walking the 
ramparts that surround the city, especially on the side of the sea, where 
they command a magnificent view of the city, the harbor and the Mediter¬ 
ranean itself, and introducing myself at the university. The second and 
third were devoted to the university, with such interuptions as pleasantly 
came of a grand mnunicipal reception given by the city to delegations from 
their ancient rival and enemy, the city of Venice. It so happened that the 
