The Po is a fine
river, but very muddy, not like the Ticino which has the advantage
of getting washed in the Lago Maggiore. On the whole Turin is well
worth seeing. Leaving it, however, on Wednesday morning we arrived
at Arona about half-past eleven: the country between the two places
is flat, but rich and well cultivated: much rice is grown, and in
consequence the whole country easily capable of being laid under
water, a thing which I should imagine the Piedmontese would not be
slow to avail themselves of; we ought to have had the Alps as a
background to the view, but they were still veiled. It was here
that a countryman, seeing me with one or two funny little pipes
which I had bought in Turin, asked me if I was a fabricante di pipi-
-a pipe-maker.
By the time that we were at Arona the sun had appeared, and the
clouds were gone; here, too, we determined to halt for half a day,
neither of us being quite the thing, so after a visit to the
colossal statue of San Carlo, which is very fine and imposing, we
laid ourselves down under the shade of some chestnut trees above the
lake, and enjoyed the extreme beauty of everything around us, until
we fell fast asleep, and yet even in sleep we seemed to retain a
consciousness of the unsurpassable beauty of the scene. After
dinner (we were stopping at the Hotel de la Poste, a very nice inn
indeed) we took a boat and went across the lake to Angera, a little
town just opposite; it was in the Austrian territory, but they made
no delay about admitting us; the reason of our excursion was, that
we might go and explore the old castle there, which is seated on an
inconsiderable eminence above the lake.
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