Ligurian Impressions of an Eighteenth-Century Traveler

“In some places on those desolate mountains, olives grow in abundance, furnishing France with good quantities of oil. . . . The Genoese also collect a few mushrooms which they manage to make a small business out of. . . . The countervailing wind prevented my arrival in Portovenere, as I had hoped. So I slept in Portofino, 20 miles from Genoa. With my ship battered by the winds, I wound up with a frightening case of seasickness. I set my stomach right in a little inn, where I found good mullet, good wine and good oil.”