is used
for fuel, and new stalks of cane replace those which have been enfeebled
by exposure and decay. The plan of training the vines on dwarfed trees
(which seems to me by far the most natural) prevails here as well as on
the other side of the Apennines; so that the vine-stalks are large and
may be hundreds of years old, instead of being (apparently) fresh from
the ground every year or two. The space between the vine-rows is usually
sown with Wheat, but sometimes planted with Corn or laid down to Grass,
and a moderate crop realized.

Crossing the Apennines mainly in the night, they seemed a little higher
than the Green Mountains of Vermont, but lacking the thrifty forests of
which I apprehend the proximity of Railroads is about to despoil that
noble range. But the Apennines, though cultivated wherever they can be,
are far more precipitous and sterile than their American counterpart,
and seem to be in good degree composed of a whitish clay or marl which
every rain is washing away, rendering the Arno after a storm one of the
muddiest streams I ever saw. I presume, therefore, that the Apennines
are, as a whole, less lofty and difficult now than they were in the days
of Romulus, of Hannibal, or even of Constantine.

We crossed the summit about daylight, and began rapidly to descend,
following down the course of one of the streams which find the Adriatic
together near the mouth of the Po. At 5 A. M. we passed the boundary of
Tuscany and entered the Papal territory, so that our baggage had to be
all taken down and searched, and our Passports re-scrutinized--two
processes to which I am becoming more accustomed than any live eel ever
was to being skinned. The time consumed was but an hour and the
pecuniary swindle trifling. But though the hour was early and there were
few habitations in sight, there soon gathered around us a swarm of most
importunate beggars--brown, withered old women spinning on distaffs held
in the hand (a process I fancied the world had outgrown), and stopping
every moment to hold out a dirty claw, with a most disgusting grimace
and whine--"For the love of God, Signor"--with ditto old men, and
children of various sizes, the youngest who could walk seeming as apt at
beggary as their grandames who have followed it, "off and on," for
seventy or eighty years. If the ancient Romans had equaled their living
progeny in begging, they need not have dared and suffered so much to
achieve the mastery of the world--th