GOLDEN DAYS IN MANY LANDS

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 246, 14 October 1908, Page 6

GOLDEN DAYS IN MANY LANDS

(BY WINIFRED H. LEYS.) FROM ROME TO MARSEILLES VIA 1 GENOA AND NICE. On following the coastal route from Rome, we say good-bye to the city of the legions and turn our thoughts to those cities whose prowess has been won on the sea — to Pisa, and to Genoa, whose galleys harried the Tyrrhenian Sea and the Mediterranean, who fought with the Saracens, and won the surrounding islands, and whose sailors were known and. feared as far south as the coast of Northern Africa, and who during the holy war sent men a« far east as Syria. I have done the i journey twice—once by day and once . by night express—and if the day be , not too hot those are very pleasant ! hours indeed in which we speed along, I at times so close to- the coast that we look out to the blue Tyrrhenian Sea ■ and catch a glimpse of fche islands dotted every here and there. Some- | I times the train wanders a little inland, j and queer fortified old towns are seen I perched high on little hills—towns that j must have :'tn_mi many a siege when Italy was divided into numerous repub- > lies. Each of these towns has a watch I tower, now crumbling and useless, but I of what tremendous importance in its | day it is not hard to guess. Before • i reaching Crosseto the line pushes some | distance inland, and skirts the heavily- j : wooded Monti dell TJcellina. For a I while we lose sight of the sea, but soon j it calls to us again as we pause at | j Follonica for space enough to look j I out at Elba and give ai thought to the ■ great man who passed some months i I there in captivity. Beyond this, the ■ 1 fortified hillocks are left behind, and i our train carries us through the | swampy land so impregnated with mal- ! alia in the summer-time that it is almost uninhabitable. Italian trains have an uncomfortable habit of never getting to a restaurantstation at an hour suitable for luncheon, and in the summer months very few even of the expresses carry a dining car. We had had some experience of j this, but-the train that carried us on our day journey up from Rome was the 1 most erratic we had struck. It would | enter a station, pause for a few '' minutes,. and then dash off again, so i that we feared to alight in search of a meal. Further on, it would rest a hundred yards or so out of a fair-sized station, leaving us stranded amid a sea of rails and shunting trains for well nigh half-an-hour. When it proposed to do one thing and when the other we never knew. The result was that we were continually rushing out of the restaurants clutching some unwrapped leg or wing of cold chicken, a spectacle fully calculated to raise the cry of "Stop thief!" In this manner, and in the space of a couple of hours, we collected a chicken here and a few rolls somewhere else, a carafe of wine on one platform and a glass further on, and eventually with a bunch of grapes added to our little store we did not fare so badly: ~ ' '" - All this while we were running along near to the sea, and at San Vincenzo gave a parting glance at the island of Elba, showing up round the promontory of Piombino. Northwards we went, never far from the lovely blue waters, until, turning a little inland, we called a halt at Pisa. Sleepy, dreamy; Pisa! once master of Sicily and Sardinia, and rich enough to i send her galleys to Syria in the cause of I the Crusades, and powerful enough to defy Genoa. But her day, though glorious, was brief, for she was no match for Genoa when the Genoese were ready for her; and Florence was her friend only so long as Florence hy this connection with the sea coast, so that when the yoke of Tuscany fell upon her shoulders she never shook it off. The" tourist passes her hurriedly; she is too sleepy, too. .dead, and all that remains of her pride may be comfortably seen between the stopping of one train and i Ehe arrival of the next. Her beautiful white marble cathedral, ncr fretwork Baptistery, her famous leaning tower, all cluster together in the almost deserted Piazza del Duo mo on the outskirts of the , town. It is said that this is tlie most beautiful collection of buildings in all Italy, and maybe it is true, for the softlytinted marble which from being snowI white has deepened into the shade of • I ivory, contrasts in a most striking ma>nner with the dull red roofs of the town and the dark- green of the mountains. At I one end of the long basilica-shaped church 113 the exquisite roundea Baptistery to >] which the Prsan mothers have brought -! their wee babies to be baptised since the ; j yeaT 1157; a. the other end rises the • tall learning campanile. Who shall say • whether it leans by accident or design; and yet the scheme of the open galleries ' that encircle it is so dainty and so ap- ' parent] v fragile that it is hard to 'believe 1 that Bonanno ever designed this beau ti--1 i ful work as a trick tower. Truly, his ' j was the plan of a perfect work, and the 1 tower of Pisa would achieve that ideal if only it stood erect. So "-o mc it seems | more satisfactory to think, as has been '; suggested, that when the third gallery 1 had been completed, the foundations on ; the south side sank, and that, in later ; ! veers, instead of abandoning the complei! tion of the tower, Benenabo and William ■ of Innsbruck did their best to rectify tho f misfortune by restoring the balance on • the upper stories. One might with pkeasur. stay awhile > and dream in Pisa, around which are i Sxtiicrod many __________ of the poet,

Shelley j but we hastened on along the Riviera, di Levante towards Genoa. 'JPhere the olive clad slopes of the mountains come so close to the Mediterranean that our train rushed along on a ledge, from which we looked directly down upon the pebbly shore. When the mountains sternly impeded our path, we dashed boldly through them, and came out again on to" the -rocky coast. Many are the cosy sheltered little towns amid the orange and olive groves that attract the delicate and the idle during the winter months. But these we passed swiftly by, catching fleeting glimpses of their umbrageou i j loveliness as our train rushed in and out of tunnels, until with a final plunge into the dark earth we came out at Genoa. Rising from the water-front, in a semicircle, Genoa is built terrace above terrace on the sloping hillsides. The older parts of the town have the very narrowed streets that rival any lane you ever squeezed through in the terror of a nightmare. Looking down some of the , wider ones, you may see women hard at work at the public washing tubs, and raising your eyes you will notice the draggled, only partially clean linen strung across the street from one window to another. But from such an alley it is only a stone's throw to the Piazza Fontane, the Via Garibaldi, and. the Via Balbi, the streets occupied almost exclusively by palaces. Wealth and poverty rub shoulders indeed in Genoa. They are no paltry shams these marble palaces that tell the story of the days when the Genoese were as terrorised by their nobles as wer e their neighbours the Florentines. Up the magnificent marble staircases we may walk, and over the slippery polished floors of the deserted halls and corridors, for some of the palaces have been turned into museums and others are open to the visitor. Streets of marble palaces! No wonder Genoa was " La Superba " in those days of her great prosperity, when she had possessions in Syria and Cyprus and Constantinople, and her trade had usurped that of Pisa, and the chain that had guarded the Pisan port hung as a trophy within her city. That was the generation of Genoese to which Columbus belonged, and as we pass his statue erected in the Piazza Acquaverde we think that they must have been a brave race who owned such a fearless spirit as their son. There is, after all, much sameness in palaces, and' as the city possessed no school of art of its own, the pictures we see upon the palace walls are the works of Rubens and Vandyek and other masters that the Genoese paid well to visit them. In Genoa there are some very fine I churches as well as gorgeous palaces; | none the less I have often wondered why j j Charles Dickens selected the outskirts of' this city as his headquarters during sevi eral months, for La Superba though she j might be called, she is and l she ever was, ! commercial. Certainly the hand of comjmerce cannot shut out the glorious sunshine, for this is the gateway of the land of Italy. But, as the story of the advenj turer, if he be brave, is attractive, so it is I with the history of Genoa. Hundreds of j her own sons set out from her harbour on tbe first crusade against Saladin. The I adventurous spirit of these seafaring j people was touched, and they went; j fought nobly, and succeeded in winning j their way into the holy city. Then they | returned l to their own city heavily laden ! with booty. In the subsequent crusades ! the Genoese took little part, for their I energies were by that time exerted in the plundering of the Spanish coast, and establishing themselves among the mosf powerful rovers of the Mediterranean. Unlike Pisa, Genoa never lost her maritime trade, and today the Genoese are the busiest people of the sunny land. They have no time to dream of past greatness in Art—they never had. But ! they stretch their hands to welcome and speed the lad.n vessels to and from their well equipped harbour. Mounting up and up by a cable-car from the Piazza della Tecca to the heights above the town known as the P.ighi, we obtained a splendid view of the harbour, protected from the rollers of the op-n sea by most extensive breakwaters, and packed with shipping of all nations. The English, the French, the German, the Spanish, the Italian sailors rub shoulders in this, the largest seaport of Italy, and the creaking of the cranes as the great liners take aboard their cargoes oi wins and olive oil, and various classes of manufactured goods is the music the Genoese love the best. Out at the Cauipo Santa the modern middle class Genoese make an effort to perpetuate their memory. The plan of this imposing cemetery is much the same as that of Milan, having the open square for the graves of the poor, surrounded by the long colonnades which shelter hundreds of the monuments of the wealthy. Some are noble and pleasing, some are merely ostentatious, and those statues which show the inartistic folds of modern dress are scarcely less than ugly. This museum of modern sculpture is certainly interesting, though many will say why all this care to glorify the unknown names of those who never conferred a benefit upon their fellows either, by their deeds or thoughts ? It is hard to bid farewell to Genoa without carrying away from one of the shops' in the Galleria Mazzini some little p___e of the finely carved filigree silver which in this city of commercial interests one views a3 a gleam of the artistic side that is hidden somewhere in the depths of every Italian nature. (To bo Coficiuded.)