II. ROME 265

their ancient arches;-a noble subject, and one of the best sketches I ever made.¹

From Genoa, more happy journey by the Eastern Riviera began to restore my spring of heart. I am just in time, in writing these memories, to catch the vision of the crossing Magra, in old time, and some of the other mountain streams of the two Rivieras.

It seems unbelievable to myself, as I set it down, but there were then only narrow mule bridges over the greater streams on either side of which were grouped the villages, where the river slackened behind its sea bar. Of course, in the large towns, Albenga, Savona, Ventimiglia, and so on, there were proper bridges; but at the intermediate hamlets (and the torrents round whose embouchures they grew were often formidable), the country people trusted to the slack of the water at the bar, and its frequent failure altogether in summer, for traverse of their own carrioles: and had neither mind nor means to build Waterloo bridges for the convenience of English carriages and four. The English carriage got across the shingle how it could; the boys of the village, if the horses could not pull it through, harnessed themselves in front; and in windy weather, with deep water on the inside of the bar, and blue breakers on the other, one really began sometimes to think of the slackening wheels of Pharaoh.²

25. It chanced that there were two days of rain as we passed the Western Riviera; there was a hot night at Albenga before they came on, and my father wrote- which was extremely wrong of him-a parody of “Woe is me, Alhama,”³ the refrain being instead, “Woe is me, Albenga”; the Moorish minarets of the old town and its Saracen legends, I suppose, having brought “the Moorish King rode up and down” into his head. Then the rain, with wild sirocco, came on; and somewhere near Savona

¹ [This drawing, also, is unknown to the editors.]

² [Exodus xiv. 25.]

³ [The refrain of Byron’s “Very Mournful Ballad on the Siege and Conquest of Alhama” (a version of a Spanish ballad).]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]