San Marino means two horses and a carriage with an awning--in our case two carriages with awnings and four horses, at twenty-five lire the carriage. And for what? For a long, dull, dusty drive between vineyards to a baking rock and back again. This rock is the centre of the republic of San Marino, and I do not deny that its little city is piled bravely upon it; but the wise traveller will permit the camera to make the journey for him. Having left Rimini at seven we were there by half-past ten, and we had not been within the gates twenty minutes before I found one of the drivers and told him that we would return at once. Idle breath! No one returns at once, or does anything at once, in these parts. Impossible, he said. The horses were worn out with the journey. The sun was too powerful. We could leave at three--not a moment sooner. Here then we remained, bound to this blistering crag, like so many Prometheus's, for four hours; while the sea sparkled for us only ten miles away. As a matter of fact, we could have got off earlier had I known and insisted. It was not the fatigue of the horses, it was not the heat, that detained us; but one of the drivers was courting a San Marino girl. I warn all intending visitors to San Marino that after having bought some of its absurd postage-stamps, on the sale of which it subsists, and attempted to eat its inferior food, there is, in hot weather, nothing whatever to do. To climb to the citadel is too exhausting; to explore the public buildings is impossible, after Rimini's cathedral, for if there is one more ridiculous thing than another it is a toy republic. San Marino once belonged to Urbino, and, declining to be joined to the Papal states in 1631, it has remained independent. The population is about ten thousand, chiefly peasants, who scratch the rock with hoes and breed cattle, and the Government consists of a Grand Council of sixty life members, of which a third are nobles, while a smaller Supreme Council of twelve are chosen from these. You see them on the picture post-cards, which compete with the stamps for the money of the stranger, and it is a few minutes' beguilement to endeavour to set the point of a pin between the nobles and the others. So what did we do? We sat on a little balcony of the inn, overlooking a tiny piazza, and watched such life as the place has, which became almost galvanic when, after a terrible cracking of whips, a mule rounded the corner dragging behind it a water-cart, and all the republicans swarmed about this cart with vessels in which to carry off the precious fluid at so much a litre.