On leaving Florence, we determined to pursue the same plan as in Germany, of stopping at the inns frequented by the common people.  They treated us here, as elsewhere, with great kindness and sympathy, and we were freed from the outrageous impositions practised at the greater hotels.  They always built a large fire to dry us, after our day’s walk in the rain, and placing chairs in the hearth, which was raised several feet above the floor, stationed us there, like the giants Gog and Magog, while the children, assembled below, gazed up in open-mouthed wonder at our elevated greatness.  They even invited us to share their simple meals with them, and it was amusing to hear their goodhearted exclamations of pity at finding we were so far from home.  We slept in the great beds (for the most of the Italian beds are calculated for a man, wife, and four children!) without fear of being assassinated, and only met with banditti in dreams.

This is a very unfavorable time of the year for foot-traveling.  We were obliged to wait three or four weeks in Florence for a remittance from America, which not only prevented our leaving as soon as was desirable, but, by the additional expense of living, left us much smaller means than we required.  However, through the kindness of a generous countryman, who unhesitatingly loaned us a considerable sum, we were enabled to start with thirty dollars each, which, with care and economy, will be quite sufficient to take us to Paris, by way of Rome and Naples, if these storms do not prevent us from walking.  Greece and the Orient, which I so ardently hoped to visit, are now out of the question.  We walked till noon to-day, over the Val di Chiana to Camuscia, the last post-station in the Tuscan dominions.  On a mountain near it is the city of Cortona, still enclosed within its Cyclopean walls, built long before the foundation of Rome.  Here our patience gave way, melted down by the unremitting rains, and while eating dinner we made a bargain for a vehicle to bring us to this city.  We gave a little more than half of what the vetturino demanded, which was still an exorbitant price—­two scudi each for a ride of thirty miles.

In a short time we were called to take our seats; I beheld with consternation a rickety, uncovered, two-wheeled vehicle, to which a single lean horse was attached.  “What!” said I; “is that the carriage you promised?” “You bargained for a calesino,” said he, “and there it is!” adding, moreover, that there was nothing else in the place.  So we clambered up, thrust our feet among the hay, and the machine rolled off with a kind of saw-mill motion, at the rate of five miles an hour.

Soon after, in ascending the mountain of the Spelunca, a sheet of blue water was revealed below us—­the Lake of Thrasymene!  From the eminence around which we drove, we looked on the whole of its broad surface and the mountains which encompass it.  It is a magnificent sheet of water, in size and shape somewhat like New York Bay, but the heights around it are far higher than the hills of Jersey or Staten Island.  Three beautiful islands lie in it, near the eastern shore.