Publisher's Synopsis
Early on the morning of Easter Monday, 1871, in company with a devoted Italian pastor, I left my temporary home in the comfortable "Grand Hotel," in the little town of Pallanza, to gratify a long-felt desire of visiting that part of Europe made sacred by ages of heroic suffering and courageous endurance for faith and fatherland-the valleys of Piedmont. As we steamed up the lake Maggiore the thin mist of early morn cleared off, and by the time we had passed the far-famed Borromean Islands the eye was ravished with the scenes of beauty on every side. Trees and flowers bloomed forth in the lovely vesture of an Italian spring, and the hills, villas, and gardens on the shores of the lake were imaged forth as in a mirror on its own fair bosom.
