After spending a few days at Milan we started to visit my eldest son, resident in a small Lombard town off the main track of the railway, where he, as a civil engineer, was superintending the construction of some irrigation works. Here we stayed some days, seeing something of genuine Italian peasant or farmer life, which the ordinary tourist sees nothing of. A primitive life it is. The farmer or peasant grows his own hemp or flax, and steeps it in one of the numerous streams that are led through the place. It is then beaten or rubbed out with the hand, the women specially joining in this labour, and afterwards spinning it with the distaff. When spun it is woven in a primitive handloom into linen for household use; or it is made into ropes by means equally primitive in their arrangement. All these would form numerous interesting groups and bits for the photographer, and tourists would gladly purchase if they could get these _souvenirs_ of the peasant in his picturesque costume engaged in these various occupations, standing at the door of the tumble-down cottage, or driving his peculiar cart.
The country is one vast flat, and it is only the people and their dwellings that afford any food for the photographer, but these are well worth recording. To do this, however, the artist must leave the beaten track, and he will need some enthusiasm for his work to make him put up with the wretched accommodation he will meet with in his country tour. We, indeed, were fortunate in not having to avail ourselves of this, staying in very comfortable quarters with our relative. The heat was excessive—so much so, that the navvies engaged on the canal construction worked all but naked, wearing nothing but a shirt.
After a few days’ stay, much interested in all we saw, we rejoined the railway and sped on our way to Arona, steamed along the shore of Lago Maggiore to Pallanza, whence we travelled along the great Simplon route to a village where another son resided, who is connected with the gold mines of that district. Here we took up our abode, making excursions up the Val Ansasca to the foot of Monte Rosa, and visiting the various Italian lakes, passing from one place to another on their shores, sometimes in rowing boats, sometimes in steamers, and sometimes by carriage. In this way we passed through scenes of lake and mountain to which no photographer that we could meet with had done justice. At every place we stopped there were plenty of photographs offered to the tourist, from the humble _carte-de-visite_ size to the more pretentious 12 by 10, but not one did I see that was worth having.