If Christopher wanted to go down to the sea he would have to pass under
the Gate of St. Andrew, with the old prison, now pulled down to make room
for the modern buildings, on his right, and go down the Salita del
Prione, which is a continuation of the Vico Dritto di Ponticello. It
slopes downwards from the Gate as the first street sloped upwards to it;
and it contains the same assortment of shops and of houses, the same
mixture of handicrafts and industries, as were seen in the Vico Dritto di
Ponticello. Presently he would come to the Piazza dell' Erbe, where
there is no grass, but only a pleasant circle of little houses and shops,
with already a smack of the sea in them, chiefly suggested by the shops
of instrument-makers, where to-day there are compasses and sextants and
chronometers. Out of the Piazza you come down the Via di San Donato and
into the Piazza of that name, where for over nine centuries the church of
San Donato has faced the sun and the weather. From there Christopher's
young feet would follow the winding Via di San Bernato, a street also
inhabited by craftsmen and workers in wood and metal; and at the last
turn of it, a gash of blue between the two cliffwalls of houses, you see
the Mediterranean.

Here, then, between the narrow little house by the Gate and the clamour
and business of the sea-front, our Christopher's feet carried him daily
during some part of his childish life. What else he did, what he thought
and felt, what little reflections he had, are but matters of conjecture.
Genoa will tell you nothing more. You may walk over the very spot where
he was born; you may unconsciously tread in the track of his vanished
feet; you may wander about the wharves of the city, and see the ships
loading and unloading--different ships, but still trafficking in
commodities not greatly different from those of his day; you may climb