The Genoese are a shrewd, active, laborious race, and possess all the qualities of a commercial and maritime community. They make skillful and hardy seamen, energetic traders, and thrifty husbandmen, and are still remarkable for the spirit of enterprise and freedom which so strongly characterized the period of the republic. Claiming Columbus as a native of their city, they have recently erected a handsome public monument in honor of that distinguished navigator. While the main business of the town is evidently maritime, there is also an extensive trade carried on in the manufacture and sale of a peculiar kind of jewelry. This consists of remarkably fine filigree-work in silver and silver gilt, which resembles that of India, and is fully as precious in .point of intrinsic value. Few of the many tourists who pass through Genoa fail to purchase one or more of these pretty and cheap articles of bijouterie.
early history of Genoa, and of its ancient inhabitants is full of uncer tainty, owing to the fabulous traditions by which it is obscured. The Ligurian tribes, who held possession of Genoa, previous to its incorporation with ancient Rome, are of disputed origin. By some historians, they are classed with the Celtic race, while others hold them to be of Greek extraction. Genoa is first mentioned in history during the second Punic war, but it then appears to have been a place of considerable importance. In 205 B.c., it became for a short time the head-quarters of Magi:), the Carthaginian gene ral, who destroyed it before leaving the country; but in 203 E.g., the Roman prmtor, Sp. Lucretius, was commissioned to rebuild it. After Liguria was conquered by the Romans (109 11.C.), Genoa does not figure much in ancient history; but as a Roman inunicipivin, it obviously prospered, for Strabo speaks of it as a "flourishing town, and the chief emporium of the Ligu•ians." Under the Romans, the Genoese retained a considerable decree of internal independence, and were distinguished in the Roman legions by their valor and great physical vigor. Ou the dismemberment of the Latin empire, Genoa, in common with the chief divisions of Italy, successively fell under the sway of the Lom bards, the Franks, and the Germans; but amid all these vicissitudes, preserved, in a singular degree, both privileges and prosperity. Navigation and commerce were the two natural sources opened to the Genoese by the maritime situation of their country, and for these pursuits they have at all times displayed a special aptitude. Their mer
cantile interests only served to foster the instinctive valor of the race. The rich mer chandise of the Genoese galleys offered an alluring prize to the piratical hordes by which the Mediterranean was universally infested; and, consequently, from the rise of their commercial importance, the Genoese were compelled to defend with the sword the precious freight of their merchantmen. Unhappily, a bitter spirit of hostility and erancc of all maritime competition was a leading feature of early Genoese policy, in regard to the other important Italian states; and to this source may be traced the fierce and prolonged wars sustained by Genoa against the rival maritime republics of Pisa and Venice. The frequent incursions of the Saracens, by whom Genoa was sacked and pil laged about 935, led the Genoese to form an alliance with Pisa, with the object of extirpating these barbarous aggressors from the islands of- Corsica and Sardinia, their strongholds in the Mediterranean. This being effected (1010-1021), the Genoese ob. tamed, by papal arbitration, the grant of Corsica, while Sardinia was assigned to the Pisans, a distribution which sowed the seeds of future discord between the two states. At the close of the 11th c., Genoa commanded large land and naval forces, and already ranked as a powerful maritime state, governed by annual magistrates, named consuls. The Genoese vigorously seconded the Crusades, and in return for their effective co-opera tion, obtained several important maritime possessions and commercial privileges in the Holy Land (1109). The chief events of the three following centuries are: the capture of Minorca (1146), of Almeria (1147), and Tortosa (1148), from the Moors; the wars with Pisa and Venice, and the civil dissensions by which Genoa, in common with all Italy, became distracted by the Guelph and Ghibelline factions. In 1284, at the great naval battle of Meloria, the Pisan republic sustained such destructive losses, that her mari time influence and public spirit never revived. The wars with Venice originated, about 1244, in mutual jealousies respecting the commercial supremacy of the Levant, and con tinued, with various vicissitudes, till the end of the following century, when the Genoese, at the blockade of Chiozza, were compelled to submit to disadvantageous terms by the peace of Turin (1381).