Again we passed through some hundreds of kilometres of fascinating country, rich, green, fertile, well tilled and cropped. No fallow. Grass hay in abundance. Finally stored in high places, may be 20 feet high. We were not far from the Italian border all day, and at least three times we passed considerable numbers of armed mounted soldiers, with batteries and machine guns. These regions are troublous places to live in. The boundaries can never be fixed. England is fortunate, she has about the same mixture of races, but there are no boundary lines where one race may merge into another, or where doubt may exist. ’Around us indivisible the sea’, as in Australia.

Noted the flat floors of the valleys and decided to write a paper on them. Lake formed. Saw two places, particularly one at Lake Dobiacco, where the whole process could be seen in progress. Shrines of all types very numerous. At times three close together, within 20 yards. Houses a bit different. Larger, better painted than Hungary. Brighter. They look very comfortable. I felt that I should like to live in one. Here in these Alpine fastnesses, where everything seems to be done as it has been done for ages, it is curious to see the power pylons striding across the land! The New and the Old. There was a vast amount of timberworking. Wood distillation. Sawmills in abundance. Water power. Valley of the Drave (Drau). Rushing waters everywhere, and it needs only a little channel to divert some to a water wheel and there you are. Village follows upon the heels of village. Churches, shrines, wells, and other villages lie higher on the hills where the woods have been cleared, or away across the fields where the valley becomes a little wider. An anti-erosion scheme on the cutting faces was made of plaited willows. These sprout and hold the soil. The fences are interesting also, no nails, strips of planks, two uprights tied with reeds.

Forest, snow, and this type of house have been with us for a long time in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Hungary, and now in Italy. But there are differences. I should love to get a book on these houses, and their differences from place to place. There is a general type of the mountain and valley peasant home, but the Swiss are far the most trim, the German and Austrian neat, the French the least clean and tidy and orderly, were it not for the Italians.

On the one side, what a contrast between the houses and villages and fields of France and Switzerland. And again now, what a contrast between those of the mountain villages of Austria and Italy. Then there are the churches, more numerous than the villages. With their different typical towers, and the extraordinarily numberless and varied shrines. Both these villages are Austrian, towards the Tyrolean (Versailles) border. As we got lower and lower the forests gave way to fruit trees and other warmer trees, for we were coming to the Mediterranean lands. And at Treviso it was a garden. The long flat fertile plains from there south to Merazo and Venice are a miracle of fruitfulness. They are astounding; there is a riot of growth, but orderly, with rich soil, abundant water, and abounding sun.

The crops, three at a time—fruit (hard pruned) vines and roots or cereals or lucerne all at once. And the glorious long avenues of great-boled planes (sycamores)! It was truly a revelation, though I had seen already (though at another season) the wonderful flat lands of the Valley of the Po River farther west. So on we came to Venice itself. The approach is much more attractive and romantic than it was by rail [in 1931], for you can see the whole magic city there before you as you approach, towers and campanile and all.

There is evidence of very heavy erosion, mostly kept in check by man, in the rushing streams from the Dolomites. The abundance of limestones in all these great mountains is a surprise to me. Not only in those made known (in analysis) by Monsieur Dolomieu. It was Sunday, but in many places peasants were in the fields, turning the grass hay that had got wet. Men and women and girls.

This evening I have written an article (for The Australasian) on the trip around the lake, so I shall not put very much here. White walls, blue water, vivid green trees, red roofs. It is most beautiful and romantic. The geology at Torbole is very good, also the obvious geomorphology. The abundance of limestone has much to do with the good roads and buildings of Italy, an important geological contribution. The western walls are steeper and are tunnelled for the roads in a wonderful way. We tore around some of these bends and through the tunnels in a hair-raising way. The circuit of the lake is 100 miles or more. All the roads are in limestone or dolomite. The upper road is newer and untunnelled. The cost must have been considerable and the engineering skill very great. All the tunnels are pierced every few yards to give both ventilation and a view of the lake.

Just as I always hoped to travel once upon the Appian Way in Rome (which I did) so also have I always wished to travel on the Grand Corniche. Now I have done the whole thing from Genoa to Nice, under gorgeous weather conditions and very pleasantly. The mountains, good and high, come right to the coast. Try as I will, and I do try everywhere, I cannot get views of mountains, villages, roads, crops, etc. Plenty of castles, and churches, and pleasure grounds, of man and his urban works but little of man and the country and his work there. Steep terraced slopes, facing the hot Southern sun. Vines abundant, with olives, figs, Mimosa (some blossoms, some dry pods). The rivers are sometimes dry, heavy with shingle always, but the majority had an outlet to the sea. Everywhere women washing clothes on the shingles of these aggrading braided streams, and it was quite common to see the women carrying home the washing on their heads. Here and there the patient ox in cart or plough, here and there a donkey in cart or with packs, here and there an ox and horse harnessed together.

First heavy limestones, I am astonished at the amount of limestones in these mountains, a most important geographical fact. Later heavy mica schists and schists generally. Then, very interesting, extraordinarily heavy conglomerates; Flysch, glacial, or heavy pluvial and coastal action due to overdeepening and rapid uplift of land? Often silicified. Here and there at a sunny small port such as Alassio there were holiday makers, speed-boats, ships, sun-bathers, regular rows and rows of them lying on their bellies on the sand. Savona seems to be an important coal port, small good harbour, heavy cranes, etc.

In addition to other crops there now were fields of trombones, asparagus, tomatoes, artichokes, potatoes, vines, figs, carnations. Plenty of Australian acacias planted at the roadsides, some kurrajongs, mesembryanthemum (like ours but maybe native), olives, figs, prickly pears, agaves, all the things that grow well with us in South Australia. Also albergos, ristoranti, pensioni, castles on peninsulas and islands, relics of the 'good old days', when 'they might take who have the power, and they might hold who can'. Must not forget the fields of castor oil plants. There were the usual strange old churches looking as old as Time, thick stone walls, close green shutters, iron gratings on all first (ground) floor windows. Some gum trees, some tamarisks, sheoaks.