We had six companions, and a motley crew they were--a little effeminate Venetian, probably a tailor, with a large, noble-looking, handsome contadina for a wife; a sputtering Dutch merchant, a fine, little, coarse, good-natured fellow, with _his_ wife, and two very small and very disagreeable children; an Austrian corporal in full uniform; and a fellow in a straw hat, speaking some unknown language, and a nondescript in every respect. The women and children, and my friends, the artists, were my companions inside, the double dicky in front accommodating the others. Conversation commenced with the journey. The Dutch spoke their dissonant language to each other, and French to us, the contadina's soft Venetian dialect broke in like a flute in a chorus of harsh instruments, and our own hissing English added to a mixture already sufficiently various. We were all day ascending mountains, and slept coolly under three or four blankets at a highland tavern, on a very wild Appenine. Our supper was gaily eaten, and our mirth served to entertain five or six English families, whose chambers were only separated from the rough raftered dining hall by double curtains. It was pleasant to hear the children and nurses speaking English unseen. The contrast made us realize forcibly the eminently foreign scene about us. The next morning, after travelling two or three hours in a thick, drizzling mist, we descended a sharp hill, and emerged at its foot into a sunshine so sudden and clear, that it seemed almost as if the night had burst into mid-day in a moment. We had come out of a black cloud. The mountain behind us was capped with it to the summit. Beneath us lay a map of a hundred valleys, all bathed and glowing in unclouded light, and on the limit of the horizon, far off as the eye could span, lay a long sparkling line of water, like a silver frame around the landscape. It was our first view of the _Adriatic_. We looked at it with the singular and indefinable emotion with which one always sees a celebrated _water_ for the first time--a sensation, it seems to me, which is like that of no other addition to our knowledge. The Mediterranean at Marseilles, the Arno at Florence, the Seine at Paris, affected me in the same way. Explain it who will, or can! An hour after, we reached the border of _Romagna_, the dominions of the Pope running up thus far into the Appenines. Here our trunks were taken off and searched more minutely. The little village was full of the dark-skinned, romantic-looking Romagnese, and my two friends, seated on a wall, with a dozen curious gazers about them, sketched the heads looking from the old stone windows, beggars, buildings, and scenery, in a mood of professional contentment. Dress apart, these highland Italians are like North American Indians--the same copper complexions, high cheek bones, thin lips, and dead, black hair. The old women particularly, would pass in any of our towns for full-blooded squaws.