We found ourselves now upon a high bank made beside the river, with marshes on either side more than fifteen miles in extent, and as wide as the eye could compass. In other days there were extensive swamps which the Signiory attempted to drain and bring under cultivation. In some places success has been achieved, but in very few. At present the view is over a muddy sterile country, thick set with cane growth, the attempt to change its character having resulted in loss rather than gain. We crossed the Adisse[31] on a floating bridge which was placed on two small boats, and was capable of carrying fifteen or twenty horses; passing over by a rope fastened to a point some five hundred paces distant in the water. To keep this rope aloft several small boats are stationed here and there and fitted with forked poles which hold up the long cord. After a journey of twenty-five miles we arrived in time for bed at Rovigo, a small town belonging to the Signiory aforesaid. Here they gave us salt in lumps, which the people take as if it were sugar. There is as great abundance of provision here as in France, in spite of what has been said to the contrary. They do not lard their roast meat, but the savour thereof is not much affected by this omission. The chambers in the matter of glass windows and shutters are inferior to our own, but the beds are better made and smoother, with an abundant supply of mattresses. They are fitted, however, almost always with small ill-fashioned canopies, and the supply of white sheets is meagre. Of these, indeed, a solitary traveller, or one with mean equipage, would most likely go lacking altogether. Charges were the same, or perhaps a trifle higher than in France. In this town was born the good Celius, surnamed _Rodoginus_.[32] It is a very handsome place with a fine square, and the river Adisse flowing through it. On the morning of Tuesday, November 15, we departed, and after going some long distance along a causeway like the one at Blois, we crossed, first the Adisse and then the Po on floating bridges like that of the day antecedent, save that on the bridges last-named are cabins where they take payment for the transit according to the printed and prescribed regulations, and, moreover, stop the raft in the middle of the stream to do their reckoning and exact payment from all passengers before suffering them to land. After disembarking on a low-lying plain, over which the road must be impassable in rainy weather, we journeyed in one spell to Ferrara, arriving there at eventide, after travelling twenty miles.