Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/272

240 The Coast people know well what the Mediterranean can do in its angry moods. Passing through the village of Coglietto, I noticed a house, said to have been the birthplace of Christopher Columbus; over the doorway runs this inscription, in terse Latin:

i.e.

Halting at Alassio for the night, we heard a story from the padrone of the hotel, who warned me not to sketch fortresses, however picturesque. An English Clergyman, staying with him, went off for a tramp in the hills, and began to sketch a fortress in a narrow pass. He was promptly run in by soldiers and being unable to talk Italian was taken for a spy. After a day or two he managed to send a letter to the hotel, and was released. "But why," I said, "did he not explain somehow that he was an English Padre?" "That," said the padrone, "would be no good in your case; has the Signor seen our Padres, how they walk?" and he imitated the stately gait of an Italian priest. "No good, for the Signor walks like this; I've seen him," and he strode up and down the room.

At Arma di Taggia, a little fishing village, one of our horses cast a shoe, and whilst it was being shod we sat down to eat lunch, and sketch a bell tower