The drive to the Campo Santo, in addition to affording a view of one of the more perfect parts of the old defensive enclosure of Genoa, of which the Porta Chiappia, one of the smaller gates, may serve as an example, passes within sight, though at some distance below, one of the few relics of classic time which the city has retained. This is the aqueduct which was constructed by the Romans. Some portions of it, so far as can be seen from below, appear to belong to the original structure; but, as it is still in use, it has been in many parts more or less reconstructed and modernized.
The environs of Genoa are pleasant. On both sides, particularly on the eastern, are country houses with gardens. The western for a time is less attractive. The suburb of Sanpierdarena is neither pretty nor interesting; but at Conigliano, and still more at Sestre Ponente, the grimy finger-marks of commerce become less conspicuous, and Nature is not wholly expelled by the two-pronged fork of mechanism. Pegli, still farther west, is a very attractive spot, much frequented in the summer time for sea-bathing. On this part of the coast the hills in places draw near to the sea, and crags rise from the water; the rocks are of interest in more than one respect to the geologist. One knoll of rock rising from the sand in the Bay of Pra is crowned by an old fortress, and at Pegli itself are one or two villas of note. Of these the gardens of the Villa Pallavicini commonly attract visitors. They reward some by stalactite grottoes and "sheets of water with boats, under artificial caverns, a Chinese pagoda, and an Egyptian obelisk;" others will be more attracted by the beauty of the vegetation, for palms and oleanders, myrtles, and camellias, with many semi-tropical plants, flourish in the open air.
We may regard Genoa as the meeting-place of the two Rivieras. The coast to the west--the Riviera di Ponente--what has now, by the cession of Nice, become in part French soil, is the better known; but that to the east, the Riviera di Levante, though less accessible on the whole, and without such an attractive feature as the Corniche road, in the judgment of some is distinctly the more beautiful. There is indeed a road which, for a part of the way, runs near the sea; but the much more indented character of the coast frequently forces it some distance inland, and ultimately it has to cross a rather considerable line of hills in order to reach Spezzia. The outline of the coast, indeed, is perhaps the most marked feature of difference between the two Rivieras. The hills on the eastern side descend far more steeply to the water than they do upon the western. They are much more sharply furrowed with gullies and more deeply indented by inlets of the sea; thus the construction of a railway from Genoa to Spezzia has been a work involving no slight labor. There are, it is stated, nearly fifty tunnels between the two towns, and it is strictly true that for a large part of the distance north of the latter place the train is more frequently under than above ground. Here it is actually an advantage to travel by the slowest train that can be found, for this may serve as an epitome of the journey by an express: "Out of a tunnel; one glance, between rocks and olive-groves, up a ravine, into which a picturesque old village is wedged; another glance down the same to the sea, sparkling in the sunlight below; a shriek from the engine, and another plunge into darkness." So narrow are some of these gullies, up which, however, a village climbs, that, if I may trust my memory, I have seen a train halted at a station with the engine in the opening of one tunnel and the last car not yet clear of another.