But I am growing unreliable.  I will return to my comparison of the lakes.  Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the truth.  They say it is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it does not look a dead enough blue for that.  Tahoe is one thousand five hundred and twenty-five feet deep in the centre, by the state geologist’s measurement.  They say the great peak opposite this town is five thousand feet high:  but I feel sure that three thousand feet of that statement is a good honest lie.  The lake is a mile wide, here, and maintains about that width from this point to its northern extremity—­which is distant sixteen miles:  from here to its southern extremity—­say fifteen miles—­it is not over half a mile wide in any place, I should think.  Its snow-clad mountains one hears so much about are only seen occasionally, and then in the distance, the Alps.  Tahoe is from ten to eighteen miles wide, and its mountains shut it in like a wall.  Their summits are never free from snow the year round.  One thing about it is very strange:  it never has even a skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same range of mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over in winter.

It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way places and compare notes with him.  We have found one of ours here—­an old soldier of the war, who is seeking bloodless adventures and rest from his campaigns in these sunny lands.—­[Colonel J. Heron foster, editor of a Pittsburgh journal, and a most estimable gentleman.  As these sheets are being prepared for the press I am pained to learn of his decease shortly after his return home—­M.T.]

CHAPTER XXI.

We voyaged by steamer down the Lago di Lecco, through wild mountain scenery, and by hamlets and villas, and disembarked at the town of Lecco.  They said it was two hours, by carriage to the ancient city of Bergamo, and that we would arrive there in good season for the railway train.  We got an open barouche and a wild, boisterous driver, and set out.  It was delightful.  We had a fast team and a perfectly smooth road.  There were towering cliffs on our left, and the pretty Lago di Lecco on our right, and every now and then it rained on us.  Just before starting, the driver picked up, in the street, a stump of a cigar an inch long, and put it in his mouth.  When he had carried it thus about an hour, I thought it would be only Christian charity to give him a light.  I handed him my cigar, which I had just lit, and he put it in his mouth and returned his stump to his pocket!  I never saw a more sociable man.  At least I never saw a man who was more sociable on a short acquaintance.