The times. (Owosso, Mich.) 1882-1897, 1886-07-23
LAKE COMO.
A Pretty Little sheet of Water, and Tina
Is All.

A Few days after leaving venice i
found myself on the shores. or banks
/ hardly know which is the correct
term-of Lake Como, writes n cores
pondent of the San Francisco Chronicle.
1t is a very pretty sheet of water, but
there are many lakes in America quite
as beautiful if less historically interest
ing and less favored as to climate.
Travellers stopping at Milan do not al
ways seem to be aware that they are SO
near to Lake Como. and consequently
fail to visit it, which is an error. BY
getting up ut an unjournalistic hour in
the morning, and taking n circular
ticket, one can 90 to Como which oc-
cupies about an hour Here he takes q
steamer-it is quite unnecessary to say
little steamer. since pig ones do not
exist in Europe-and is conveyed to
Bellagio, where he has two or three
hours for observation. Then he takes
another steamer equally small, and
without going to Colico, at the further
end-a name with q choleraic sound
he turns down the other arm, and at
Lecco boards train which brings him
back to Milan by dinner-time. 1t is
time enough to see everything of special
interest, unless he desires to take up his
abode in this quiet retreat, where he
can have an occasional Whit of the
mountain air, even i'm midsummer, and
a sight of the SHOWS that forever whiten
the higher peaks of the Alps. 1t may
interest the classical scholar to be re-
minded that the Romans lived and culti-
waited the soil about Lake Como, and
that noble Roman of distinction, who
might have been Seneca if he was not
another, had u villa on its shores. Villa
is better term here than palace, the
grandiloquent word used by Bulwer in
his inflated play, The Lady of Lyons. {"
Much of the lake is so narrow that.
as the steamer ripples in quiet waters,
either bank, and the visitor who re-
members Claude and Pauline scans at
tentively the little valleys and the steep
hillsides that seem to disappear in tho
clouds, if perchance he may discover II
palace like that which the deceitful
lover described in such glowing terms
to his enraptured inamorata. He re-
marks nothing that corresponds to the
rhetorical architectural details of Bulwer.
There are some very pretty residences
along the banks, nesting in valleys,
half hidden by foliage, but none that
can be called, with any proprety of
speech, palace. Towns and villages
abound along the entire length of the
lake, which is thirty-two miles, though
1t often seems hardly possible for them
to cling to the steep hillsides, and they
are all of the Italian type, with some
variations introduced by foreign resi-
dents. Como has $4,000 inhabitants,
Cernobb 720, Bellagio 2,745, Menaggio
1870. Colico 1929, Lccco 1910. The
other towns and villages are generally
smaller. The vine is cultivated on the
hillsides, and very good wine is made
at Bellagio, whose reputation, however,
hardly transcends the horizon of the
lake. The olive, which grows in y
gnarled and contracted fashion, since
it finds the climate somewhat inhospit-
able. brightens the steep slopes with its
bright green foliage. The lake has u
strange popularity. Having no suili-
cient outlet it is subject to foundations
whenever unusual rains are precipitated
on its capacious watershed and run of
quickly into it. One of these, about a
year ago, threatened to do serious dam
age to Como.
The poets have been really, or have
protested to be, singularly inspired by
the marvellous beauties of Lake Como.
l happened to remember some lines OF
a pretty, but rather meaningless poem,
whose burden was the following couplet:
met my love among the low
Rose gardens by Bellagio.
Of course the poet did nothing of the
sort, the pretended meeting being all in
his minds eye, but the lines perplexed
me because ! could not really tell
whether the place where he had his
alleged felicity was Bellagio or Menag-
gio there being so many aggios and
eggios in Italy that the mind gets quite
perplcxed in trying to disentangle them.
There was certainly nothing in Bel
lagio that could be called rose garden
in the sense in which the Persian poets
used the term, nor even as q Californian
reared in u land of roses, would under
stand it, and ] could not conceive that
Menaggio, which / could see q mile or
so off on the other side, had any more
luxurious floral accessories. Gardens
there were, but they were in no wise re-
markable, and the roses or rose bushes
in them were not abundant. 1t is thus
that the poets beguile the people with
their vain imaginings! Bulwer had
seen q great many palaces before he
wrote, but it is uncertain that he had
then seen Lake Como, while the other
rhymester may have seen the lake, but
came from n land where one rose made
summer, and the few in its gardens
seemed profusion.
Lake Como is in its way quiet and
beautiful. 1t is really a place of retire
ment and repose, where the native life
is dull and silent, and foreigners come
rather to add to the quiet than to dis
turb it. The passage of the steamer is
a little feature of activity in the land
scape. Its landing at the wharves of
the tranquil villages, with the hustle of
arrival and departure, are the unim-
portant events which give the day all
that it has of healthy excitement. In
winter its airs must be chilling and its
towns and villages absolutely cold and
dead. In summer its attractions are
all seen at their best and for itself as