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Show . I TRAVELETTE I By Niksah. : : f ALBENGA. Half a mile from the blue Italian sea lies the little city of AJhenga, with its seven dull-red towers. The old towers loom up against the horizon with an effect ef-fect of immense solidity, of quiet permanence, per-manence, that is in curious contrast with the rest of the scattering, straggly little village. The towers, to one who knows her story, express the spirit of Albenga well. They are battered and time-scarred, time-scarred, softened in outline by the slow-wheeling slow-wheeling centuries, but still they stand four-square. No less than eternal Rome herself, Albenga Al-benga endures through the ages. Tile little lit-tle city by the sea has withstood more of disaster from man and nature than Rome herself. Yet she is very much alive today, with that primal vitality rooted in the Italian soil which defies the flight of time. , Little, time-worn houses: old -Roman courts where ragged children play in the shadow of ruined palaces; fragrance of peach-blossoms, . laughter of women; stone steps worn into grooves nine inches deep by the plodding feet of a thousand years; an atmosphere of untroubled serenity se-renity where neither joy nor sorrow rise out of a minor key that is AJbenga today. to-day. In the days of Haninbal, Albenga made alliance with Carthage against Rome herself, her-self, and had she not defected at a critical criti-cal moment the course of history might have been changed. Through the empire, through the middle ages, through the renaissance, the city was a powerful seaport, sea-port, often involved in war. usually on the losing side, seven times burnt, always al-ways rebuilt by a people who clung to the spot in the face of all calamity. Today To-day Albenga stands, when the very site of great Carthage is a mystery. The sea itself deserted Alhenga. when the Cena river built a mile of mud-flat between the port and salt water. Ker shipping gone, her people dying of t.iarsh-bred t.iarsh-bred fevers. Albenga drained the new marshes and turned them into fertile fields and orchards. Below the present town lie ruins scores of feet deep, powdered pow-dered dust of dead cities from which she grew. About her rise the arches of strange stone bridges, left dry and futile fu-tile when the shifting river changed its course. Charred beams in old hails bear mute witness to the torch of the Lombards Lom-bards and the Fisans. who burned her. No matter. On the ashes of dead cities she was rebuilt, new bridges span the new channel of the Cena, what was burned has been repaired. So long as the indomnitablc spirit endures, man and nature together cannot conquer even a little city. |