three hundred yards wide, in a pendulum boat. The rope is fastened
on one side of the river, three hundred yards above, and supported by
eight intermediate canoes, with little masts in them to give a greater
elevation to the rope. We pass in eleven minutes. Women, girls, and boys
are working with the hoe, and breaking the clods with mauls.

April 25. _Voltaggio. Campo-Marone. Genoa_. At Novi, the Apennines begin
to rise. Their growth of timber is oak, tall, small, and knotty, and
chestnut. We soon lose the walnut, ascending, and find it again, about
one fourth of the way down, on the south side. About halfway down, we
find figs and vines, which continue fine and in great abundance. The
Apennines are mostly covered with soil, and are in corn, pasture,
mulberries and figs, in the parts before indicated. About half way from
their foot to Genoa, at Campo-Marone, we find again the olive tree.
Hence the produce becomes mixed, of all the kinds before mentioned. The
method of sowing the Indian corn at Campo-Marone, is as follows. With
a hoe shaped like the blade of a trowel, two feet long, and six inches
broad at its upper end, pointed below, and a little curved, they make
a trench. In that, they drop the grains six inches apart. Then two feet
from that, they make another trench, throwing the earth they take out of
that on the grain of the last one, with a singular slight and quickness;
and so through the whole piece. The last trench is filled with the earth
adjoining.

April 26. _Genoa_. Strawberries at Genoa. Scaffold poles for the upper
parts of a wall, as for the third story, rest on the window sills of the
story below. Slate is used here for paving, for steps, for stairs (the
rise as well as tread), and for fixed Venetian blinds. At the Palazzo
Marcello Durazzo, benches with straight legs, and bottoms of cane. At
the Palazzo del Prencipe Lomellino, at Sestri, a phaeton with a canopy.
At the former, tables folding into one plane. At Nervi they have pease,
strawberries, &c. all the year round. The gardens of the Count Durazzo
at Nervi, exhibit as rich a mixture of the _utile dulci_, as I ever
saw. All the environs in Genoa are in olives, figs, oranges, mulberries,
corn, and garden-stuff. Aloes in many places, but they never flower.

April 28. _Noli_. The Apennine and Alps appear to me to be one and the
same continued ridge of mountains, separating every where the waters
of the Adriatic Gulf from those of the Mediterranean.