Villa Trotti, Residence Of The Daughter Of The Princess Belgiojoso.

The Princess Belgiojoso.

General Radetsky.

Road Beside Lake Como, Near Varenna, Built By The Austrian Government.

"bravely struggled. In 1859, but ten years after the battle of Novara, the irrepressible war broke out anew, and the united armies of Napoleon III. and Victor Emanuel by the brilliant victories of Solferino and Magenta expelled the Austrians from Lombardy, and gave to Italy the unity she had so long desired, and for the attainment of which so many precious lives had been sublimely sacrificed, and so much suffering endured.

In front of almost every prominent villa on Lake Como stands a darsenna, or boat-house, usually built of massive masonry, and often having on its broad, flat roof a kind of garden-terrace. The entrance to these darsennas is always made to face the south, since the prevailing winds and storms sweep downward from the north. Sometimes, however, instead of a separate edifice, built out into the lake, a short canal is cut obliquely into the garden, admitting water enough to float the boats enclosed, and reached by steps descending into it, like those we find in ancient columbaria. Life on the lake is necessarily more or less aquatic, for the new carriage-road along its western bank is not yet finished, and for long distances one must own a naphtha launch, or be dependent on the steamers. Hence, even though one has but little fondness for the water, cares nothing for the sport of fishing, and distrusts a sail-boat, he finally concludes that for a hundred trifling purposes the owning of at least a rowboat here ranks as a prime necessity. True, at the tourist centres, during the "season," one hails a boatman on the Larian lake as easily as a gondolier in Venice. But in the months when travelers are scarce, the oarsmen largely disappear to seek more lucrative employments, and lake-dwellers are thrown upon their own resources. The genuine barcauoli of Lake Como are, like most North Italians, hardworking, honest, and obliging. Some of them are descended from a line of ancestors who have for many generations followed the same employment. At present, however, those who are not in the service of hotels or private villas lead a precarious existence, for the Societa Lariana has put into commission two or three little steamers, which run at frequent intervals from one to another of the popular resorts around the central section of the lake.

House Where The Armistice Was Signed After The Battle Of Novara, 1849.

Italian Boathouses.

A Barcauolo.

This sadly interferes, of course, with the professional boatmen, who, like the gondoliers of Venice, bitterly complain that steamship companies take the bread from out their mouths.

It is another illustration of the fact that no economic change, however small, is made without inflicting suffering on some one.

One old man loves to recount to me the stories, told him by his father, of the life here previous to the advent of the steamers. Then villa owners on the Lario had always in their service ten or a dozen boatmen, whose brawny arms, in crews of eight, would send a barca through the water at prodigious speed, and could in fact convey their patron down to Como almost as quickly as the present steamboats, when one takes into consideration the latter's numerous delays and zig-zag course. The nearest approach to such a craft at present is the stately barge of the Grand Duke of Saxe- Meiningen, and even this is almost never seen.

The Enemy Of The Boatmen.

The Barge Of The Grand Duke Of Saxe-Meiningen.