Round About Lake Como.......Elizabeth Robins Pennell......Century

The way to journey to the lakes, if you can, is the old way-by road and over the Alps; for in no other can you get in its full perfection that first wonderful impression of Italy, as when, after having climbed from some bleak Alpine valley to the top of a high pass, a swift descent brings you almost at once to the vineyards and mulberries and corn fields flooded with sunshine. The loveliness of the earth, the serenity of the sky, the clear and complete language of Italy-these were the things that struck Shelley most.

You have your choice of many passes. The Simplon, with its wild ravine of Gondo; the San Bernardino, with the castellated Valle Misocco; the St. Gotthard, with its gorges, are an approach to Maggiore, and the two latter to Lugano as well the Stelvio, the highest, and on the Austrian side the most desolate; the Splügen, with its tiers upon tiers of zigzags; the Maloja-all three will carry you to Como; or you may wind with the Brenner down the Garda. Each route has its characteristic beauty to commend it. Of the lakes, Como, with the old romantic travelers, had usually the preference. Wordsworth, who in his foreign wanderings managed to forget his Peter Bells and primroses, held it to be the finest. Shelley wrote to Peacock that "Como, long and narrow," with "the appearance of a mighty river winding among the mountains and the forests," exceeded anything he had "ever beheld in beauty, with the exception of the arbutus islands of Killarney," and that it was a serious blow when he had to forego its "divine solitude." Ruskin always thought it fortunate that the first lake of Italy he saw was Como. .

You do not know Como until you have watched the panorama from the steamboat, and the best plan is, if you have come by the Splügen, the Maloja, or the Stelvio, to take at Colico the little boat with its square sail and rounded awning. The shores are one long succession of glorified drop-curtains, with everywhere that grouping of objects Hazlitt declared essential to the picturesque. It all seems as deliberately composed as a Claude or a Wilson. The hills always slope at the right angle to meet the waters, the white campanile always rises just where it is most needed, the white town always stretches along the banks just where its shining walls and reflections best break the monotony of green, and always in the foreground is the little boat with its square sail and rounded awning. The castles, like those which frown across at each other from Rezzonico and Corenno, appear to be

there solely because they balance the composition. The mountains inclose the long, winding lake only that the grand sweep of their lines may lead up dramatically to the grim battlement of Alps, the barrier against the North and its colder skies. In the noonday heat the whole picture fades into a few vague, blurred washes of color-color saturated with light. But landscape of this kind tires you as much as a gallery of masterpieces. It is too perfect. Besides, it is only from the road that you can see the detail that goes to make the panorama; only when you ride or wander, now between the high white garden walls, now close on the open shore, and now in and out of the little arcaded towns where the boats lie motionless in the miniature harbors, and the streets are silent in the sunlight.

So, at Como, I started out on my bicycle and rode along the western shores of the lake, which are still, as Shelley described them, "one continued village," lined with stately dwellings, among orange groves and cypresses, in every one of which Ruskin saw Portia's villa or Juliet's palace. By Cernobbio, by Moltrasio, I wheeled, looking over to the opposite banks, where, in the Villa Pliniana, Shelley would have made his home, and I put up for the night at Argegno, as primitive a little place as if it were miles away. For the extraordinary part of Como is that, once you leave the tourists' headquarters, you find towns and people quite unspoiled. At Argegno there was an old-fashioned albergo, with a stone floor in my bedroom, and the way to it led through the family living room. Though only a few miles off, in the hotels of Cadenabbia and Bellaggio, a correct table d'hôte was being served to a correct gathering of all nations, I ate my dinner at a little table by the front door, with, for company, a few children tumbling in the gutter, and a stray mule passing so close as almost to graze the table cloth, and the fishermen and boatmen on the quay of the tiny harbor, and a couple of passing pifferari, who stopped and piped to us all. But in the morning, hardly had I steamed from Argegno-the road between is impassable unless you travel on foot or on muleback or with a donkey-than I was at Tremezzo and Cadenabbia, in the midst of the gold-laced porters, the foreigners, the big hotels that are precisely the same the world over. However, the Tremezzina, as the western bank just here is called, like Venice, can never be altogether vulgarized. The arcaded streets of Tremezzo, the road beyond, bits of it "sun-proof," though not

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with "the purple of the trellis roof," as Wordsworth sings, the Villa Carlotta, or Sommariva, with its terraces and sentimental statues, its shady groves and wonderful old gates, Cadenabbia itself, cool and sheltered, looking over to the gardens of Bellaggio and the oleanders of Varenna, seem as imperishable in their loveliness as the palace-lined canals of the City of the Lagoons. Every glimpse of the lake is a glowing water. color by Turner, every villa and hillside of terraces a vignette out of Roger's "Italy." wonder Ruskin declared all these things "almost native through Turner-familiar at once and revered." You can ride on through ceaseless beauty to Menaggio and its cluster of hotels and oleanders. It is this part of Como that is most lavish in flower and fruit and Southern luxuriancethere are places where it seems almost Ouidaesque in its wealth and profusion-this part that is most closely lined with the villas that, even if ugly in themselves, if "full of the Renaissance," are transfigured in the sunshine. It is here you begin to understand, if you have just come from Switzerland, why the Swiss and Italian lakes, so alike in their main features, are so utterly different in character, the Swiss always having a cheerful air of industry and thrift, the Italian a magnificent suggestion of indolence and extravagance.

Teneriffe Sketches...... Mary Cholmondeley......... Chautauquan

It is seven o'clock on a February morning. Candelaria has just brought me a cup of goat's milk, and I may as well drink it at the open window. What an air comes blowing in, warm as an English June, but laden with spicy garlic. smells, which would tell me that I was in a subtropical climate if I shut my eyes.

High and near at hand, shutting out most of the turquoise blue of the sky, which will be bluer still presently, rise the fantastic, tortured outlines of the range of volcanic hills which shelter Santa Cruz from the North. These hills fill me with a species of horror. They appear to me like the work of demons, and as if temptation and crime lurked among their stony-tilted ravines and rent clefts. Among those clinging cactuses and clumps. of "devil's fingers" Faust might have walked and stumbled, with Mephistopheles at his ear. But to-day, with the morning sun and the cloud shadows upon their seared, grotesque faces, they look almost dignified, almost absolved of evil. A weird beauty takes possession of them.

It is silent up there. Down here at their feet the day is already in full career. The black goats are bleating and ringing their bells. The "Canarien birts," as a German friend calls them, are

shouting among the pepper trees. The canaries are not yellow, as they ought to be, but brown, which I regard in the light of a personal injury. There goes the hoopoo again. "Cuk! cuk! cuk!" just like the first note of the cuckoo, repeated three times over, but more sweetly. I wish I could see him. .

We are soon clattering down the narrow streets of Santa Cruz; Santa Cruz the capital; Santa Cruz the dirty; Santa Cruz littered with refuse and slovenly soldiers and mongrel dogs; Santa Cruz the evil-smelling, where a few years ago the cholera raged and will rage again. Our three horses make a tremendous noise on the round stones between the high yellow and pink walls. Half the women of the town are leaning out of their windows and quaint, roofed-in balconies. Two camels, with patient, treacherous faces pass us on silent, padded feet, nearly brushing us with their loads; a young woman, with black lace. mantilla and fan, comes out of a green doorway, followed by her duenna. A soldier in the street is making love apparently to three sisters at once at an upper window. We rattle with many crackings of whips past the Plaza, past the church where Nelson's flag is kept under glass, and so out along the sea road, the splendid new road, cut out of the living rock, which leads to nowhere and skirts the sea for miles.

Our driver is certainly unbending. He has lit a cigarette, and is resting his feet on the top of the splashboard. The universal smoking at first surprised us, but we are now becoming accustomed to be served by a shopman who is smoking, to see a priest smoking in the church, to be begged of by an old woman who is smoking, and to see the young women washing, or rather banging and rending clothes, with cigarettes in their mouths.

Presently we pass a hole scraped out of the rock, some twenty feet above the road. It has excited our curiosity before. It is apparently inaccessible, yet shows signs of habitation. On this occasion a man is sitting in it with his long white blanket, looking very much at home, beside a small fire, the smoke of which curls blue against the cliffside.

And now we turn back and see Santa Cruz lying like a handful of dice at the foot of a sweeping range of hills, and beyond, behind, a small excrescence peeps up, like the top of a sugarloaf fresh from the stores. The driver waves his cigarette at the sugar-loaf and says, "Pica!"

We have heard of the Peak all our lives. We have read how the straining eye of the traveler ever looks too low as he approaches Teneriffe, and then sees the Peak high in air above him. We

have waited patiently for nearly a month, while "it kept itself to itself." Now our illusions drop from us. We gaze at the snow-covered bagatelle, and then at each other in silent indignation.

"Is that all?" I say at last, in the tone of a cabman, looking at a "long shilling." And apparently it is all, for a cloud rolls before it, and it is gone. A low clap of thunder is tossed about among the steep ravines past which the road runs. Make haste home, coachman, or we shall be caught in a storm! One black cloud after another is hurrying up across the jagged hilltops. Our three horses make better speed uphill than down, and we are soon clattering through Santa Cruz once more, and up the main street. A sudden whirlwind of dust catches us in the open by the bull-ring, and with it come the first large drops of rain. But we are nearly home now. We reach the gate, and leaving the carriage we run up the short drive.

The gust has fallen as suddenly as it rose. All is very silent in the garden, where the birds nearly deafened us earlier in the day. Not a breath stirs. It is the lull before the storm. The low sun peers over the shoulder of the hill.

We look back. The peaks of the Grand Canary lie clear and ethereal against an opal sky, above a sea of changing amethyst, which near at hand melts to a shimmering green as of reflected larches in still water in spring.

Is that vision of a holy city, rising stainless, girt with amber, and crowned with pearl, above a sea of glass-can that be Santa Cruz? Nay, for surely we can almost see its streets of gold; in the silence we can almost hear the song of those who walk therein in white robes.

For one moment the rainbow flings its arch like a benediction across transfigured sea and sky and gleaming town. And then, with a sigh-as of one who sees what God would have him to be our little island world hides its face and breaks into a passion of tears.

Railway Ride in Venezuela. .Luther Ellsworth..Cleveland Plain Dealer At Palma Sola, one of the most important stations along the railway, I saw huge piles of coffee, cocoa, hides, skins, fine woods, etc., that had arrived by wagon from the celebrated city of San Felipe and its vicinity for exportation via Tucasas and Puerto Cabello. The city of San Felipe is the capital of the state of Yaracuy, founded by the Spaniards in 1551, and some of the structures erected at that time still remain and are in a state that renders them habitable. To-day it is a beautiful city with a cultured population of over 15,000 persons and possesses specimens of architecture of which any city might be proud,

among which are the municipal buildings, soldiers' quarters, police station, federal college building, in which are located the press, telegraph and telephone offices, ancient aqueduct for water supply, gardens and parks, and many really beautiful residences.

Aroa station is but two hours' ride from El Hacha, all up grade. At this station are the passenger and freight stations, shops for the repair and renewal of locomotives, cars, etc., and several hundred feet almost straight up a high mountain are the residence of the manager, and cottages of the railway employees and officers of the company.

The town of Aroa is Spanish-built, having the traditional narrow streets and peculiar buildings, and stores with tile roofs, and it had to be fought for several times during the revolution.

A branch of the Bolivar railway extends from Aroa station to the copper mines of the Quebrado Copper Mining Co., which are several miles up the mountain, but that company, an English corporation, for financial reasons, is not operating the mines at the present time, and considerable work must now be done on them before they can be worked again, as a part of the tunnels have fallen in.

The electric light plant of the railway, located at Aroa, is excellently equipped and the light it furnishes is the best. The shops of the company, at the same station, are supplied with modern machinery, have competent men and cover a large territory, and their storehouses, near the shops, have a complete supply of the materials, tools, etc., so necessary for the repairs and renewals of a railway.

As I entered Fowey, the little omnibus turned and twisted through streets so narrow that the people had sometimes to get into doorways to let it pass; it plunged downhill and climbed uphill, the driver blowing a whistle at certain points to clear the way; I caught, in passing, glimpses of an inch or two of water in the narrow space between two houses; and came out finally upon a high terrace from which I could look down on the harbor with its masts, the exquisite curve of Polruan across the harbor, the wedge of green land, dividing the two branches of the river, and outward, around the rocks, the sea itself. There was not a breath of wind; the sea lay as still as the harbor; the afternoon sun filled the air with dry heat; some yachts were coming in slowly, with white hulls and white sails, and a little boat with an orange sail passed close to the shore. I had felt, as the omnibus twisted in the narrow

streets, as if I were entering Arles; but the hills and valleys were new to me; and there was something at once new and yet slightly familiar in this Southern heat on a little town of old houses, spread out along the side of a hill which runs sharply in from the sea, where the river comes down to make a natural harbor. As I walked, afterward, along the roads, at that height, looking down on the sea through trees and tall, bright flowers and green foliage, I could have fancied myself in Naples, walking along the terrace roads at Posilippo. And the air was as mild as the air of Naples, and the sea as blue as the sea of the bay of Naples. It stretched away under the hot sunlight, waveless to the horizon, scarcely lapping against the great cliffs covered with green to the sea's edge. Trees grew in the clefts of the rock, they climbed up the hill, covering it with luxuriant woods; deep country lanes took one inland, and the butterflies fluttered out of the bushes and over the edge of the cliff, where they met the sea gulls, coming in from sea like great white butterflies. All day long the sea lay motionless, and the yachts went in and out of the harbor, and the steam tugs brought in black, four-masted ships with foreign sailors, and the ferryboat, rowed slowly by an old man, crawled across from Fowey to Polruan, and from Polruan to Fowey. There was always, in those slow, sunwarmed days, a sense of something quiet, unmoved, in the place; and yet always a certain movement on the water, a passing of ships, a passing and returning of boats, the flight of sea gulls curving from land to land.

To sit at an open window, or in the garden, under an awning, and to look down on all this moving quiet, was enough entertainment for day or night. I felt the same languid sense of physical comfort that I have felt on the coast of Spain, with the same disinclination to do anything, even to think, with any intentness. The air was full of sleep; the faint noise of the water flapping on the rocks, the sound of voices, of oars, something in the dull brilliance of the water, like the surface of a mirror, reflecting all the heat of the sky, came up to one drowsily; the boats, with white or rusty sails, passed like great birds or moths, afloat on the water. On the other side, over against me, Polruan lay back in the arms of the hill, with its feet in the water; and I was never tired of looking at Polruan. It seemed not so much to have been made, as to have grown there, like something natural to the rock, all its houses set as if instinctively, each in its own corner, with all the symmetry of accident. It nestled into the harbor; on the other side of the hill were the high cliffs and the sea.

At night, looking across at Polruan, I could see a long dark mass, deep black under the shadow of the moon, which sharpened the outline of its summit against the sky; here and there a light, in some window; and beyond, to the right, the white glitter of the sea. The harbor was partly in shadow, near the further shore, and the masts of the boats, each with its little yellow light, plunged into the water, almost motionless. The nearer part of the river was bright, like the sea, and glittered under the moon. An infinity of stars clustered together overhead. I could hear, if I listened, a very faint ripple against the rocks, and at intervals two fishing boats, moored together, creaked heavily.

On the west side of the Bowery, nearly opposite Rivington street, stands an ancient milestone which, in its neglected old age, still gives to the passerby the information "one mile to City Hall." The stone has a sidewise slant, coming doubtless from age and dizziness at the whirl of life in which it now finds itself, for since it was set up to encourage the traveler in the Bouwerie it has seen enough of the vicissitudes of time to turn any head. Now, apparently, the Bowery is about to enter on a new phase of its existence, and the pathetic old landmark will either be removed or perhaps protected by some of the historical societies which have hitherto had no eyes for its unhappy condition. The tide of business is turning toward the Bowery with a rapidity which surprises even those who realized that the time must come when the advantages of that neighborhood would be understood and the reputation from the street's past lived down.

Take any one who knows the famous thoroughfare chiefly through the song which set forth that "they say such things and they do such things on the Bowery" for a walk down the street, and he will doubtless feel rather defrauded by its respectable character. Above Grand street, with the exception of a few notorious resorts, known and avoided by all but those who like,that sort of thing, the Bowery is all that could be desired. Women may walk the streets at any hour and meet nothing but courtesy. Children play about with the habitual cheerfulness of young tenement dwellers. Here and there a brightly lighted concert hall may attract the uninitiated to see an uncommonly bad performance of some kind, but there is little to satisfy the lover of the sensational. Below Grand street-that is another story. Even there the street compares favorably with many others that do not suffer from equally evil reputations.