grizzly; but her
head is large, and one might be contented to be as wise as she looks.

The party is at length mounted, and clatters away through the narrow
streets. Donkey-riding is very good for people who think they cannot
walk. It looks very much like riding, to a spectator; and it deceives
the person undertaking it into an amount of exercise equal to walking.
I have a great admiration for the donkey character. There never was
such patience under wrong treatment, such return of devotion for injury.
Their obstinacy, which is so much talked about, is only an exercise of
the right of private judgment, and an intelligent exercise of it, no
doubt, if we could take the donkey point of view, as so many of us are
accused of doing in other things. I am certain of one thing: in any
large excursion party there will be more obstinate people than obstinate
donkeys; and yet the poor brutes get all the thwacks and thumps. We are
bound to-day for the Punta della Campanella, the extreme point of the
promontory, and ten miles away. The path lies up the steps from the new
Massa carriage-road, now on the backbone of the ridge, and now in
the recesses of the broken country. What an animated picture is the
donkeycade, as it mounts the steeps, winding along the zigzags! Hear
the little bridlebells jingling, the drivers groaning their "a-e-ugh,
a-e-ugh," the riders making a merry din of laughter, and firing off a
fusillade of ejaculations of delight and wonder.

The road is between high walls; round the sweep of curved terraces which
rise above and below us, bearing the glistening olive; through glens and
gullies; over and under arches, vine-grown,--how little we make use of
the arch at home!--round sunny dells where orange orchards gleam; past
shrines, little chapels perched on rocks, rude villas commanding most
extensive sweeps of sea and shore. The almond trees are in full bloom,
every twig a thickly-set spike of the pink and white blossoms; daisies
and dandelions are out; the purple crocuses sprinkle the ground, the
petals exquisitely varied on the reverse side, and the stamens of bright
salmon color; the large double anemones have come forth, certain that it
is spring; on the higher crags by the wayside the Mediterranean heather
has shaken out its delicate flowers, which fill the air with a mild
fragrance; while blue violets, sweet of scent like the English, make our
path a perfumed one. And this is winter.

We have made a late star