It is not to be compared to Windermere or Loch Lomond
for beauty, nor with Lake Champlain and many a smaller lake in my own
country, none of which, I hope, will ever become so historically
interesting as this famous spot. A few miles onward our passport was
countersigned at the Tuscan custom-house, and our luggage permitted to
pass without examination on payment of a fee of nine or ten pauls,
besides two pauls to the porters. There appears to be no concealment on
the part of the officials in thus waiving the exercise of their duty, and
I rather imagine that the thing is recognized and permitted by their
superiors. At all events, it is very convenient for the traveller.
We saw Cortona, sitting, like so many other cities in this region, on its
hill, and arrived about noon at Arezzo, which also stretches up a high
hillside, and is surrounded, as they all are, by its walls or the remains
of one, with a fortified gate across every entrance.
I remember one little village, somewhere in the neighborhood of the
Clitumnus, which we entered by one gateway, and, in the course of two
minutes at the utmost, left by the opposite one, so diminutive was this
walled town.
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