We slept at Neumarkt, called in Italian, Egna. We had left our beautiful valley here; and, as is too often the case, in a region of transition from mountain to plain, the soil is marshy and the district unhealthy. There was a large, new-built, clean hotel at Neumarkt; but though the rooms were good, the living was intolerably bad, so that we went nearly supperless to bed.

Tuesday, September 13th.

Still we approached Italy; the hills were covered with vines, the road shut in by the walls of vineyards. Various valleys branch off at intervals, all affording the scenery peculiar to the Tyrol. I own I had no desire to linger longer in this land: we had continued for so many days among ravines, defiles, and narrow valleys, peering up at the sky from the depths between mountains, that the eye grew eager for a view of heaven, and yearned to behold a more extensive horizon. When the bourne of a journey lies beyond, the desire to linger, even in beautiful scenery, is weak. Since I had left Gmunden and Salzburg I had experienced no desire to stop short.

Some names of cities are so familiar, that one forms an idea of them in one’s mind as one does of a celebrated, but personally unknown, individual. The Council of Trent is associated with cardinals and bishops—shepherds of the church, legislators of religion: there was something princely, yet holy, in its idea. What we saw of it looked miserably dirty; grand at a distance and beautifully situated, on entering it, it was common-place; but, after all, nothing can be more deceptive than the impression a way-worn traveller receives, driven, perhaps, through the meanest streets to an hotel where, fatigued, body and mind, he reposes, and then is off again. Mr. P—— sought out the cathedral and the organ, but the organist declared that the instrument was out of tune, whether from laziness or not, I cannot say. The hotel was good; we dined at the table d’hôte. Again I was restored to the privilege of speech, as Italian here is as common as German.

Our compact with our lohn kutschers ceased at Trent. We paid them 140 Bavarian florins, and gave them 30 swanzigers as drink-gelt; a swanziger is the third of an Austrian florin, its worth is eightpence English, and is a very intelligible and convenient coin. The men were satisfied and we had no reason to be otherwise: their conduct had been, on the whole, negative—sullen and silent; and yet with a latent violence and insolence which peeped out as a rank weed on a grassless plain, strangely, unexpectedly, and by no means welcome; I believe they thought of nothing but their drink-gelt the whole way. I was much more interested in the horses, who had done their duty rather better.

We had now to look out for a conveyance to Riva, the town at the head of the Lago di Garda, where we are to find the steam-boat, which is to convey us to its southern shores. We engaged a calèche and a caratella for twenty-two Austrian florins, and were soon on our way. We were in high spirits on having parted with our Germans, and on finding ourselves on the very verge of Italy. I do not pretend to say that this is a correct feeling; but it was natural, considering our ignorance of German. The valley of the Adige is very grand; and the stream, broad and swift, was more of a river than we had seen since the Danube. Several valleys branch off here; and there is another route to Venice. We were sorry not to see the famous Slovino di San Marco, or avalanche of stone, near Serravalle, celebrated by Dante, who was for some time a guest at the Castello Lizzana; where, exiled from Florence, he was entertained by the lord of Castelbarco.

At Roveredo we changed horses: our road, always on the descent, now became exceedingly precipitous, and ran on the very edge of the steep bank of the Adige. Our drivers were strange fellows. He who drove the calèche in which I sat, was a rough, uncouth animal; but he of the caratella was the most singular—neither Italian nor German in his ways, wild as an untamed animal—coarse and vulgar as a metropolitan vagrant. He was civil enough, indeed; but seemed half-mad with high spirits. You might have thought him half-drunk, but he was not—roaring and singing, and whipping his horses, and turning round to talk to the gentlemen in the caratella with a dare-devil air. I saw him whip his horses into a gallop, and heard him laughing and singing as he dashed down a road, which, in truth, required the drag. It was quite dusk—or rather, but for the stars, dark; which added not a little to the apparent danger. Our driver, a little more tame, yet disdained the drag—and we went down at a rattling pace: I was not sorry, for I was eager to assure myself that our friends in advance were not upset and rolled in the Adige, which rushed at the foot of the rock which our road bounded;—not they,—we reached the bottom, and saw the caratella dashing madly on in the advance. Before or since I never met such fellows; if my friends thought that Italians resembled them, they were indeed mistaken; they had none of their innate refinement, but they had their good humour: they were more like what one reads of as the wanderers of the far west—except, we are told, the Americans appear always to calculate, and so perhaps did these fellows; but they had the outward guise of nearly being insane.

We got to Riva safe. It stands exactly at the head of the Lago di Garda;

Suso in Italia bella giace un laco,

Appiè dell’ alpe, che serra Lamagna,