Page:Pictures From Italy.djvu/95

Rh noble bays: are charming. The vegetation is, everywhere, luxuriant and beautiful, and the Palm tree makes a novel feature in the novel scenery. In one town, San Remo—a most extraordinary place, built on gloomy open arches, so that one might ramble underneath the whole town—there are pretty terrace gardens; in other towns, there is the clang of shipwrights' hammers, and the building of small vessels on the beach. In some of the broad bays, the fleets of Europe might ride at anchor. In every case, each little group of houses presents, in the distance, some enchanting confusion of picturesque and fanciful shapes. The road itself—now high above the glittering sea, which breaks against the foot of the precipice: now turning inland to sweep the shore of a bay: now crossing the stony bed of a mountain stream: now low down on the beach: now winding among riven rocks of many forms and colours: now chequered by a solitary ruined tower, one of a chain of towers built, in old time, to protect the coast from the invasions of the Barbary Corsairs—presents new beauties every moment. When its own striking scenery is passed, and it trails on through a long line of suburb on the flat sea-shore, to Genoa, then, the changing glimpses of that noble city and its Harbour, awaken a new source of interest; freshened by every huge, unwieldy, half-inhabited old house in its outskirts; and coming to its climax when the city Gate is reached, and all Genoa with its beautiful harbour, and neighbouring hills, bursts proudly on the view.