ntrance into Italy is by the roa

llers, but at Menton, almost on the frontier, one is within arm's reach of things Italian, where life is less feverish, in strong contrast to the French atmosphere which

to Italy, crosses a deep ravine by the Pont Sa

la and Ventimiglia, but little by little the Ravine of Saint Louis has become a hostile frontier, where the custom house officials of France and I

an, thinking perhaps she might be a Ni?oise, who, among the world's beautiful women, occupy a very high place. She replied in French

ist and other travellers by road go through the formalities made necessary by governmental red tape. Red tape is all right in the right place, but it should b

ou stick out for orange because they were that colour when you bought the outfit, but the representative of the law sticks out too-he for red. The result is, you compromise on brown, and hope that the other customs guardian on duty at the frontier post by which you will enter France again will be blessed with the same sense of colour-blindness as was his fe

gold, and a thousand or fifteen hundred francs in gold one does not usually carry around loose in his pocket. We passed through readily enough, but a poor non-French, non-Italian speaking American who followed in our wheel-tracks had not made his preparations beforehand, and French banknotes didn't look good enough to the Italian customs

ring Italian soil, but beyond its aspect, so alien to tha

be so costly, as the customs officials take him at his word, graciously chalk his luggage and pass him on. The Guardie-Finanze, or customs officer, of Italy is a genteel looking youn

Romans. To-day, on the left bank of the Roja, is a new city made up of the attributes of a great r

rming, on the banks of the tumbling Roja at the base of the Alps of Piedmont, just where they plun

ese parts in the middle ages. The Genoese held it for a time, then the Counts of Provence and the Duke of Savoy.

wn below, is an ancient Roman castellum. Two fragmentary towers alone remain, and as a ruin, even, it is beneath consideration. One only notices it in pass

enoese-is still to be seen in picturesque ruin at Dolce

are delightful enough, but there is little that is attractive about the place itself. The automobilist will have no troub

erected by Sixte-Quint, was tottering on its base. In return for the service he asked the favour of the Pope that his native town should have the honour of supplyin

buttressed roofs and walls, still breathes of the medi?val spirit. It is as crowded a quarter, where dwell men, women and children,-seemingly children mostly,-as can be found east of Grand, Canal or Hester Street

ing around bold promontories on a shelf of rock, tunnelling through some mountain spur, dipp

rous as the American variety; in a way more so. They are barred simply by a great swinging tree-trunk, which, of all things, swings outwards and across the road when not in use. Even when closed this bar is so placed that an

t the circumstance has been met with, and it is conceivable that, in many more instances, stranger automobilists have scattered coin in their wake which led to the development of the practice, but all the same one need not, should not, in fa

eath. At the bottom of the cliff, a hundred metres below the road on which you ride, break the soapy waves of the sea. Gulls circle about uttering their shrill cries, an eagle soars above, and far below a fisherman pushes lazily at his oar in the conventional stand-up Mediterranean fashion, or a red-brown latteen-rigged fishing boat darts in or out of some half-hidden bay or cala

on tower, reminding one of those great keeps of England and of Foulque's Nerra

hill-top town too, in that it crowns a promontory jutting seawards, formin

from the little port; but the whole town bears a prosperous well-kept air that makes one regret that it had not a battery of "sight

glia's substitute for wine cellars, but otherwise the hurried traveller at Oneglia remarks nothing but that it is a "resort" with big hotels and b

within its walls and "in extremis" the prelate called down curses upon the surrounding country, praying that it might wither and dry up. It must have been an efficac

e land blossoms again, though truth to tell both the wine and olive produ

e fishing and coastwise trade at Alassio which along the quais endows it with a certain picturesqueness, and the chief hotel is quartered in a seventeenth century palazzo, formerly belonging to the Marchese Durante. Alassio took its name from Alassia,

t that the name of the island is derived from a species of hens and chickens which were bred

of a castle tower is passed, and the background foot-hills of the A

s of this fallen pride of place are not wanting in Albenga to-day. There are innumerable great brick and stone towers, now often built into some surrounding structure. Three may be remarked

ave that incident to the workaday affairs of factories, workshops and shipping. The inhabitants of the neighbouring towns profess to recognize the native of Albenga a

l fifty kilometres to the eastward, but midway between it and Albenga is Finale Marina, a town of one main street, two enormous painted churches, an imposing fortification

, but its picturesque outer walls, with diamond-cut stone facets, like those of the

quisate. Not much changed is the old chateau, except to put new wine in the old bottles and new linen on the antique beds. To

there the least semblance of a garage. You pay nothing additional for this, and that's something in Italy where automobiles-in the small towns-are still regarded as mechanical curiosities a

between Menton and Genoa if one is travel

r of a collection of ruined walls and towers which would be a pride to any medi?val "borgo." Noli, like

hipping rising, cloud-like, on the horizon far away to the eastward, and may even descry that classic landmark,

close off shore beneath the Capo di Vado, itself crowned wi

, away from the coast, roll the first foot-hills of the Apennines, their nearby slopes and crests dotted, here and there, with some grim

s perched a colossal madonna, a venerated shrine of the Ligurian sailor-folk. It bears a

ato, in sub

nostra beni

. The Genoese, in turn, came along and blocked up the port out of sh

larks, remarked it, though in no way is it superior in beauty to a score of oth

umbered streets in the town itself. Here are great wide park-like thoroughfares flagged with flat smooth stones

enoa in his nostrils, albeit they are a good fifty kilometres away as yet; aro

endowed with a certain quaint picturesqueness. It has a palm-tree-lined quay which borders a string of ship-building yards where the wooden walls of Genoa's commerce-carrying craft were formerly built in large numbers, and where, to-day, a remnant of this industry is still carried on. Great long-horned white oxen haul ti

ed "Il Deserto," and properly enough named it is. It was founded by a lady of the Pallavicini family who as a recompense-it is to be

is so, as his father Dominico was known to be a property owner near Genoa. Savona, Oneglia and Geno

rsistency. Each class of traveller wonders why Genoa is not reached more quickly, and the automobilist, for the last dozen kilometres, has been cursed with a most exasperating, always-in-the-way tramway, with innumerable carts, badly paved roads and mu

moke and cinders in strong contrast to the pine-clad background hills, in which nestle

is the Villa Pallavicini, with a labyrinth of grottoes, subterranean lakes, cement moulded rocks, Chinese pagodas and the like. It is not lovely, but is

financier, for he went off to England with the churchly funds and became an English country gentleman, in the reign o

ratio P

he Pope to p

s of Charles V. It was, like its contemporaries, a gorgeous establishment, but in popular fancy it enjoy

ay and none too cleanly. From San Pier d'Arena one comes immediately within the confines of Genoa itself, just after circlin

o Dori

asola, the gardens of the Villa Rosazza and of the Villa de Negroni, and the terraces of the Palazzo Doria offer as enchanting a series of

of the mountain and the plain, of great docks and wha

rracks line the wharves, while in between, and here, there and everywhere, are great and venerable palaces and churches of marble, many of them built in layers of black and white stone, i

that reason, strangers, who do not walk "en tour" as much as they ought, save in the corridors of picture galleries

responsible traffic of carts and drays, tramways and what not, Genoa is indeed, of all other cities on earth, in need of a boulevard for the new traffic. To get to your hotel at the further end of the town as you make your entrance by the road circ

and as cosmopolitan as Babylon. It was near the Bourse and one entered marble halls by a marble staircase, flanked by a marble balustrade and finished off with newel posts supported by marble lions. The great entrance hall was surrounded by a

industrial enterprises, from one given to exploiting a new combustible to another which was financing a rubber plantation in Abyssinia. A che

erican factory, whose output of agricultural machinery is found in all four quarters of the globe. Breakfast foods were there, too, and there was a big lith

something or other, the sign read) painted the bluest of blue sky pictures, and the most fiery

e arms, with a heraldic angel still to be seen over the entrance doorway, count for nothing to-day, but exist as a vivid

admirable institutions in a more northerly clime, where the sun is less strong and rain more frequent. Here their glass roofs radiate an insufferable heat, which o

garage accommodation for twenty-five automobiles, and charges two francs and a half to fo

eek out the F. I. A. T. garage a mile or more away), but you get something tha

of Genoa itself, in that they were bu

is a collection of villas which c

llas, and again mere modest dwellings. All are surrounded with hedges of

a favourite lounging place, and the whole aspect of the villa and its

mmonly said, of the great Michael Angelo. The ancient Sardinian Palaz

ce-house, long, and almost dwarfish on the front, where the "piano nobile" is also the ground floor; but on the side facing the sea it is a story higher, and of stately prop