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VAL DAONE.

gorge descends in steps, separated by swampy plat-forms ; lower down, its fall becomes more regular,gradually steepening as it approaches Boazze. Theground is broken and rugged, and the path until recentimprovements must have been very bad. The Chieseis a noble torrent, green and clear despite its glacierbirth, and a perpetual delight to the eyes, whether itleaps in white foam over some ash-hung crag or swirls inpure eddies in a bubbling caldron.

Boazze, a sawmill and a chalet, stands in a sharpangle under wooded cliffs. The houses are built, likevillages in the Northern Caucasus, of huge, red, un-smootlied pine-trunks. The woodcutters have amusedtheir leisure by painting imaginative titles over thevarious doors. Here we read ‘ Cafe e Billiardo,’ there‘ Sala di Recreazione,’ or ‘ Buvetta.’ But the thirstytraveller must not be deluded thereby into expectinganything but a glass of the very roughest of countrywine.

It is a long but very beautiful three hours’ walkdown Yal Daone to the high-road at Pieve di Buono.The mountains are not so high as those which surroundYal di Genova, but they are rich in colour and pic-turesque in form. There are steep steps, down whichthe river thunders in sheets of foam, level meadow ex-panses, tall cliffs fringed with graceful foliage. Side-glens break through the walls on either hand, and giveglimpses into an upper land of lawns and pines, fromwhich we are being rapidly carried away towards hill-sides clothed with walnuts and chestnuts and all greenItalian things. Some two hours from Boazze theChiese is left to fight its own way out through a deepravine, and the road takes an upward inclination. On