Then, at the railway stations you have a regular chain of porters for your luggage, as formidable as the array of officials who receive and show you into your hotel, one and all expecting a fee for the service of _welcome_ (?) they have rendered. Hence, it is far cheaper to travel by Cook's Tickets; and if you decide to remain a week or longer at a place, it is a good plan to select a _pension_, where you will be charged so much a week _inclusive_.
Such is the system of extortion in Italy, that if you purchase anything at a shop--mosaics, jewellery, or what not--you are held in contempt if you at once pay the price that is demanded, the shopkeepers naming a sum perhaps three times as much as what they finally take and consider as a good bargain.
The 29th of March, the morning of our departure from Florence, was as bright and bracing as a real old-fashioned English May morn, and we felt it to be truly enjoyable as we sped over the well-cultivated and sunny plains of the Florentine Basin, the outlines of the distant scenery charmingly developing in the clear Italian atmosphere. Indeed, it is this atmosphere which renders Italy so beautiful, every feature displayed to the best advantage, and the eye allowed to roam from one object to another; whilst in our London, for instance, during one half the year, the view too frequently presents a blurred mass, little really to be seen with distinctness, the buildings and great edifices looming darkly through a half fog--no dimpling lights and shadows, giving life, warmth, and animation, quickening one with admiration and rapture. It is like an otherwise beautiful woman spoiled by a bad complexion.
We passed through fine open plains, then a series of tunnels, rocky defiles, over mountain streams and fertile valleys, until we reached Pracchia. We had been steadily ascending to higher ground, and were now nearly at the top of a mountain range, a wild defile and stream on the one side, a mountain road on the other. Then craggy cliffs, waterfalls, and snow-capped mountains follow in grand succession; sometimes a deep valley, with a mountain torrent plunging far, far into the depths below, the water hanging from the rocks in long petrified icicles. Men and women, like specks in the distance, toiling up the steep hills and winding paths, laden with faggots. We seemed to have been circling round two great mountains whilst having these enchanting glimpses of ever-varying scenery, with no end of intervening tunnels. At last we appear to have passed through a final one, and, emerging quite into daylight, find we have attained the topmost part of the mountains at a station called Pittachia, where we found a good buffet. We here encountered a great many little country maidens, offering bunches of beautiful primroses and violets--veritably a sweet refreshment!