The streets are narrow, dark, and dirty; the
inhabitants lean and squalid; and the withered old women, with
their wiry grey hair twisted up into a knot on the top of the head,
like a pad to carry loads on, are so intensely ugly, both along the
Riviera, and in Genoa, too, that, seen straggling about in dim
doorways with their spindles, or crooning together in by-corners,
they are like a population of Witches--except that they certainly
are not to be suspected of brooms or any other instrument of
cleanliness. Neither are the pig-skins, in common use to hold
wine, and hung out in the sun in all directions, by any means
ornamental, as they always preserve the form of very bloated pigs,
with their heads and legs cut off, dangling upside-down by their
own tails.
These towns, as they are seen in the approach, however: nestling,
with their clustering roofs and towers, among trees on steep hill-
sides, or built upon the brink of 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.
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