ake,--and on the snow-crowned hills upon the
left, and on the dirty village of Colico upon the right, and on the
indolent beggars waiting to welcome us, and sunning their goitres at
the landing.

The name Colico, indeed, might be literally taken in English as
descriptive of the local insalubrity. The place was once large, but it
has fallen away much from sickness, and we found a bill posted in its
public places inviting emigrants to America on the part of a German
steamship company. It was the only advertisement of the kind I
ever saw in Italy, and I judged that the people must be notoriously
discontented there to make it worth the while of a steamship company
to tempt from home any of the home-keeping Italian race. And
yet Colico, though undeniably hot, and openly dirty, and tacitly
unhealthy, had merits, though the dinner we got there was not among
its virtues. It had an accessible country about it; that is, its woods
and fields were not impenetrably walled in from the vagabond foot;
and after we had dined we went and lay down under some greenly waving
trees beside a field of corn, and heard the plumed and panoplied maize
talking to itself of its kindred in America. It always has a welcome
for tourists of our nation wherever it finds us in Italy; and
sometimes its sympathy, expressed in a rustling and clashing of its
long green blades, or in its strong sweet perfume, has, as already
hinted, made me homesick, though I have been uniformly unaffected by
potato-patches and tobacco-fields. If only the maize could impart to
the Italian cooks the beautiful mystery of roasting-ears! Ah! then
indeed it might claim a full and perfect fraternization from its
compatriots abroad.

From where we lay beside the corn-field, we could see, through the
twinkling leaves and the twinkling atmosphere, the great hills across
the lake, taking their afternoon naps, with their clouds drawn like
handkerchiefs over their heads. It was very hot, and the red and
purple ooze of the unwholesome river below "burnt like a witch's
oils." It was indeed but a fevered joy we snatched from Nature there;
and I am afraid that we got nothing more comfortable from sentiment,
when, rising, we wandered off through the unguarded fields toward a
ruined tower on a hill. It must have been a relic of feudal times,
and I could easily believe it had been the hold of one of those wicked
lords who used to rule in the terror of the people beside peaceful and
happy Como