st of woe,--wailing in accents the very wildest, and deluging the
land in torrents. Mountain streams that were rivulets in the morning,
before noon arrives are great rivers, swollen and turbid, carrying away
massive rocks from their foundations, and tearing up large trees by the
roots. The dried-up stony bed you have crossed a couple of hours back
with unwetted feet is now the course of a stream that would defy the
boldest.

These sudden changes are remarkably frequent along that beautiful tract
between Nice and Massa, and which is known as the "Riviera di Levante."
The rivers, fed from innumerable streams that pour down from the
Apennines, are almost instantaneously swollen; and as their bed
continually slopes towards the sea, the course of the waters is one of
headlong velocity. Of these, the most dangerous by far is the Magra. The
river, which even in dry seasons is a considerable stream, becomes, when
fed by its tributaries, a very formidable body of water, stretching full
a mile in width, and occasionally spreading a vast sheet of foam close
to the very outskirts of Sarzana. The passage of the river is all the
more dangerous at these periods as it approaches the sea, and more than
one instance is recorded where the stout raft, devoted to the use of
travellers, has been carried away to the ocean.

Where the great post-road from Genoa to the South passes, a miserable
shealing stands, half hidden in tall osiers, and surrounded with a
sedgy, swampy soil the foot sinks in at every step. This is the shelter
of the boatmen who navigate the raft, and who, in relays by day and
night, are in waiting for the service of travellers. In the dreary days
of winter, or in the drearier nights, it is scarcely possible to imagine
a more hopeless spot; deep in the midst of a low marshy tract, the
especial home of tertian fever, with the wild stream roaring at the very
door-sill, and the thunder of the angry ocean near, it is indeed all
that one can picture of desolation and wretchedness. Nor do the living
features of the scene relieve its gloomy influence. Though strong men,
and many of them in the prime of life, premature age and decay seem to
have settled down upon them. Their lustreless eyes and leaden lips tell
of ague, and their sad, thoughtful faces bespeak those who are often
called upon to meet peril, and who are destined to lives of emergency
and hazard.

It was in the low and miserable hut we speak of, just as night set in