My voiturier gave me a lesson worth learning, and not perhaps unworthy of note for other unsuspicious travellers. We had a written contract to Chiavenna, and thence to Colico he had agreed verbally to take us for a certain sum; before we started I found, however, that he intended to charge us three times as much as we had agreed upon, and, as very luckily we found a diligence on the point of starting, we secured places in the cabriolet at its back, from which we had the best possible position for seeing the views, and so left him in the lurch, with divers admonitions to behave himself more honestly for the future. At ten we left, and had a very enjoyable ride to Colico. The valley, however, bore sad traces of the havoc made by the inundations of the Meira, and of the storm of the previous night. We soon reached the shores of the little Lake of Riva, along whose banks our road took us sometimes in tunnels, sometimes on causeways built out into the water, until at last we reached the valley up which runs the Stelvio road, and then, after passing along the whole length of a straight road lined on each side with a wearisome and endless row of poplars, we were at Colico. Here we prudently availed ourselves of the opportunity of an hour’s delay in the departure of the boat for an early dinner, and, then embarking, waited patiently the pleasure of our captain. The scenery of Lake Como has been so often extravagantly praised that I was quite prepared to be disappointed; but for the whole distance from Colico to Lecco it is certainly on the whole more striking than any lake scenery I have seen. The mountains at its head are extremely irregular and picturesque, and throughout its whole length there is great change and variety. In this respect it contrasts favourably with most other lakes, and I certainly think that not even in the Lake of Lucerne is there any one view so grand as that which one has looking up from within a short distance of the head of Como over the Lake of Riva to the mountains closing in the Stelvio, and rising nobly above the sources of the Meira and the Lira. Somewhat, too, may be said of the innumerable villages and white villas with which the banks of the lake are studded; they give a sunny, inhabited, and cheerful feeling to the whole scene; and, reflected in the deep blue lake in those long-drawn lines of flakey white which are seen in no other water to such perfection, add certainly some beauty to the general view. One of these villages--Gravidona--within half an hour’s sail of Colico, ought not to be left unvisited by any one who cares about architecture.