IN SUNNY ITALY
The next morning I continued my tramp into sunny Italy. The highway was
covered with deep mud, and my garments were still wet when I drew them
on. But the day was bright with sunshine. The vine-covered hillside and
rolling plains below, the lizards basking on every shelf of rock,
peasant women plodding barefoot along the route, made it hard to realize
that the weather of the day before had been dismal and chilling.
As I walked on I met countless poor people. Ragged children quarreled
for the possession of an apple-core thrown by the wayside; the rolling
fields were alive with barefooted women toiling like slaves. A sparrow
could not have found a living behind them. In wayside orchards men armed
with grain-sacks stripped even the trees of their leaves—for what
purpose I did not know until the bed I was assigned to in the village
below offered a possible explanation. All along the highway were what
looked from a distance like walking hay-stacks. But when I came nearer I
saw beneath them the tired faces of women or half grown girls.
Nightfall found me looking for lodging in a lake-side village half way
between Como and Lecco. I found an inn after a long and careful search;
but, as it had no door opening on to the street, I was puzzled as to
where to enter it. There was a dark passageway and a darker stairway
before me, leading downward into a pit. I plunged down the passage with
my hands out in front of me—which was fortunate, for I brought up
against a stone wall. Then I stealthily approached the stairway,
stumbled up the stone steps over a stray cat and a tin pan, and into the
common room of the village inn—common because it served as kitchen,
dining-room, parlor, and office.
I asked for supper and lodging. The proprietor half rose to his feet,
sat down again, and motioned me to a seat. I took a place opposite him
on one of the two benches near the fireplace, partly because it had been
raining outside, but chiefly because there were no chairs. A long
silence followed. The keeper sat on his bench, staring long and hard at
me without saying a word. His wife wandered in and placed several pots
and kettles around the fire that toasted our heels.
“Not nice weather,” grinned the landlord at last, and after that we were
soon engaged in lively conversation. Too lively, in fact, for my host at
one time became so earnest about something he was telling that he kicked
over a kettle of macaroni, and was banished from the chimney-corner by
his angry wife. Not being in the habit of making gestures with my feet,
I kept my place and tried to answer the questions that the exile fired
at me from across the room.
When drowsiness fell upon me, the hostess led the way to a large, airy
room. The coarse sheets on the bed were remarkably white, although the
Italian housewife does her washing in the village brook, and never uses
hot water. Such labor is cheap in Italy, and for all of this I paid less
than ten cents.
Early next day I pushed on toward Lecco. A light frost had fallen in the
night, and the peasants, alarmed by the first breath of winter, sent
into the vineyards every man, woman, and child able to work. The pickers
labored feverishly. All day women plodded from the fields to the
roadside with great buckets of grapes to be dumped into barrels on
waiting ox-carts. Men wearing heavy wooden shoes jumped now and then
into the barrels and stamped the grapes down. When full, the barrels
were covered with strips of dirty canvas, the farmer climbed into his
cart, turned his oxen into the highway, and promptly fell asleep. When
he reached the village, he drew up before the chute of the village
wine-press, and shoveled his grapes into a slowly revolving hopper. Here
they were crushed to an oozy pulp, and then run into huge tanks and left
to settle.
After stopping for a morning lunch I tramped through and beyond Bergamo,
where a level highway led across a vast plain covered with grape-vines
and watered by a network of canals. Behind me only a ghostlike range of
the Alps wavered in the haze of the distant sky-line.
About the time I arrived in northern Italy the butchers had gone on a
strike. That did not trouble me much, for I had eaten nothing but bread
for weeks. The bread was made into loaves of the size, shape, and
toughness of baseballs. Still, hard loaves soaked in wine, or crushed
between two wayside rocks, could be eaten, in a way; and as long as they
were plentiful I could not suffer from lack of food.
A few miles farther on, however, at each of the bakeries of a village I
was turned away with the cry of:
“There is no bread! The strike! The bakers have joined the strike and no
more bread is made.”
To satisfy that day’s appetite I had to eat “paste,” a mushy mess of
macaroni.
I was returning next morning from an early view of the picturesque
bridges and the ancient buildings of Verona, when I came upon a howling
mob, quarreling, pushing, and scratching in a struggle to reach the
gateway leading to the city hall. Behind this gate above the sea of
heads I could just see the top of some heavy instrument, and the caps of
a squad of policemen. I asked an excited neighbor the cause of the
squabble. He glared at me and howled something in reply. The only word I
understood was _pane_ (bread). I turned to a man behind me. Before I
could speak to him, he shoved me aside and crowded into my place, at the
same time shouting, “Pane!” I tried to crowd past him. He jabbed me
twice in the ribs with his elbows, and again roared, “Pane!” In fact,
everywhere above the howl and noise of the multitude one word rang out,
clear and sharp—“Pane! pane! pane!” My hunger of the day before, and the
thought of the long miles before me, aroused my interest in that
product. I dived into the human whirlpool and battled my way toward the
center.
Reaching the front rank, I paused to look about me. Behind the iron
gate, a dozen perspiring policemen were guarding several huge baskets of
those baseball loaves. Beyond them stood the instrument that had
attracted my attention. It was a pair of wooden scales that looked big
enough to give the weight of an ox. Still farther on, an officer, who
seemed to feel the importance of his position, sat over a huge book, a
pen the size of a dagger behind each ear, and one resembling a young
bayonet in his hand.
One by one, the citizens of Verona were pushed through the gate into the
space where the policemen guarded the bread, to be halted suddenly with
the shouted question, “Pound or two pounds?” Once weighed out, his
loaves were passed rapidly from one to another of the officials, so
rapidly that the citizen had to run to keep up with them. When he
reached the officer sitting before the big book, he had to pause while
the latter asked him questions and wrote down the answers. Then he ran
on until he reached the receiving table of another official, where he
caught his flying loaves and made his escape.
Almost before I had time to see how it was done, the pushing crowd sent
me spinning through the gate. “Two pounds!” I shouted as I rushed on in
my journey toward the book. In a very short time I had reached the last
official, dropped ten _soldi_, gathered up my bread, and left by a gate
that opened into an alley.
Perhaps you think it was easy to carry two armfuls of baseball loaves.
Take my word for it that it was no simple task. A loaf rolled into the
gutter before I had taken a dozen steps. The others tried to squirm out
of my grasp. With both hands full, I had to disgrace myself by squatting
on the pavement to fill my pockets; and even then I had a hard time
keeping them from jumping away from me. People must have taken me for a
traveling juggler. I made up my mind that I must either give or throw
some of those loaves away.
He who longs to give alms in Italy has not far to look for some one
willing to benefit by his kindness. I glanced down the alley, and my
eyes fell on a mournful-looking beggar crouched in a gloomy doorway.
With a kind-hearted smile, I bestowed upon him enough of my load to
enable him to play the American national game until the season closed.
The outcast wore a sign marked, “Deaf and dumb.” Either he had picked up
the wrong card in hurrying forth to business that morning, or my
generous gift surprised him out of his misfortune; for as long as a
screeching voice could reach me I was flooded with more blessings than I
could possibly have found use for.
I plodded on toward Vincenza. All that day, while I sat in village inns,
groups of discouraged-looking men sat scolding against the bakers, and
watching me enviously as I soaked my hard-earned loaves in a glass of
wine.
When morning broke again, I decided to test the third-class cars of
Italy to see if they were more comfortable than walking; so I took the
train from Vincenza to Padua. At least, the ticket I purchased bore the
name Padua, though the company hardly lived up to the printed agreement
thereon. At the end of several hours of slow jolting and bumping, we
were set down in the center of a wheat-field. The guard shouted,
“Padua!” It seemed to me I had heard somewhere that Padua boasted
buildings and streets, like other cities. It was possible that I had not
been informed correctly. But I could not rid myself of the idea, and I
wandered out through the lonely station to ask the first passer-by how
to get to Padua.
“Padova!” he snorted. “Certainly this is Padova! Follow this road for a
mile. Just before you come in sight of a white-washed pig-sty, turn to
the left, walk straight ahead, and the city cannot escape you.”
I followed his directions, and in due time came to the city gate.
I never saw such a sleepy town. The sun is certainly hot in Italy in the
summer months, but I had not expected to find a place where the people
slept all the time. The city seemed lost in slumber. The few horses
dragged their vehicles after them at a snail’s pace, the drivers nodding
on their seats. Many of the shop-keepers had put up their shutters and
gone home to rest. Those who had not could with difficulty be aroused
from their midday naps to attend to the wants of yawning customers. The
very dogs slept in the gutters or under the chairs of their drowsy
masters. Even many of the buildings were crumbling away and seemed to be
falling asleep like the inhabitants.
However, I had a chance to look at the famous statues and architecture
in peace, and, leaving the sleepy city to slumber on, I set off at
noonday toward Venice. Away to the eastward stretched land as flat and
unbroken as the sea. Walking was not so easy, however, as it had been
among the mountains behind, for a powerful wind from the Adriatic Sea
pressed me back like an unseen hand at my breast. Although I had been
certain that I would reach the coast town, Fusiano, before evening,
twilight found me still plodding across barren lowlands. With the first
twinkling star a faint glow of light appeared afar off to the left.
Steadily it grew until it lighted up a distant corner of the sky, while
the wind howled stronger and louder across the unpeopled waste.
Night had long since settled down when the lapping of waves told me that
I had reached the coast-line. A few rickety huts rose up out of the
darkness; but still far out over the sea hovered that glow in the sky—no
distant fire, as I had supposed, but the reflected lights of the island
city, Venice. I had long been thinking of the cheering meal and the soft
couch that I would have before boarding the steamer that would take me
to the city of the sea; but I had to do without them. For there was no
inn among the hovels of Fusiano. I took shelter in a shanty down on the
beach, and waited patiently for the ten o’clock boat.
By ten o’clock there had gathered on the crazy wharf enough dark-faced
people to fill the steamer. On the open sea the wind was wild. Now and
then a wave spat in the faces of the passengers huddled together on the
deck. A ship’s officer jammed his way among us to collect the six-cent
tickets.
[Illustration: The Bridge of Sighs, so-called because it leads from the
Justice Court in the Palace of the Doges on the left to the prison on
the right. It crosses the Grand Canal of Venice.]
By and by the steamer stopped tossing about and began to glide smoothly.
I pushed to the rail to peer out into the night. Before me I saw a
stretch of smooth water in which twinkled the reflection of thousands of
lights of smaller boats, and the illuminated windows of a block of
houses rising sheer out of the sea. We glided into port. A gondola
lighted up by torches at both ends glided across our path. A wide canal
opened on our left, and wound in and out among great buildings faintly
lighted up by lamps and lanterns on the mooring-posts. It was the Grand
Canal of Venice. The steamer nosed its way through a fleet of gondolas
and tied up at a landing before a marble column.
I went ashore and looked about me. There were no streets, and the hotels
that faced the canals were all too expensive for me. I did not know
where to look for the poor man’s section of the city. For two full hours
I tramped through squares and dark, narrow alleys, only to turn up at
last within a stone’s throw of my landing-place. I finally spent the
night outdoors, sitting on the edge of the canal.
After spending a few days in Venice, I walked down to the Grand Canal
one morning, with my mind made up to ride in a gondola. I had difficulty
in attracting the attention of the water cabman. They are not in the
habit of asking men wearing corduroys and flannel shirts to be their
passengers. A score of them had just recovered from a rush made on a
tow-head wearing the regular tourist clothes. They did not seem to see
me. When I boldly called out to them, they crowded around me to jeer and
laugh at the laborer trying to play the lord. For some time they thought
I was joking. I had to show them my purse with money in it before one of
them offered to take me aboard.
Along the Grand Canal passing gondoliers, without passengers to keep
them in proper conduct, flung cutting taunts at my boatman.
“Eh, Amico!” they called out, “what’s that you’ve got?”
[Illustration: My gondolier on the Grand Canal.]
“Ch’è un rico colui quà, eh?” (“Pretty rich wine that, eh?”)
“Sanque della Vergine, caro mio, dove hai accozzato quello?” (“But, my
dear fellow, where did you pick that one up?”)
But my guide finally lost his grin and became respectful, pointing out
objects of interest with a face as solemn as an owl, and shaking his
head sternly at his fellow boatmen when they began to joke.
Fear drove me away from Venice before I had rested the miles from Paris
out of my legs—fear that in a few days more the mosquitoes would finish
their wicked work and devour me entirely. On a Sunday evening I made my
way to the station and bought a third-class ticket to Bologna.
Under a lowering sun our train crawled slowly into Bologna—so slowly
that I was glad to get off and walk. I struck off along the ancient
highway to Florence. The country was mountainous, so that when I was not
climbing up I was climbing down. The people in this section were very
poor, earning their living by tending cattle or by making wine. A few
miles from the town the highway began to wind up among lonely mountains.
Here and there a vineyard clung to a wrinkled hillside. At such spots
tall cone-shaped buckets holding about two bushels each stood by the
roadside, some filled with grapes, others with the floating pulp left by
the crushers.
What kind of crusher was used I did not learn until nearly nightfall.
Then, suddenly coming round a huge boulder, I stepped into a group of
bare-legged women who were slowly treading up and down in as many
buckets of grapes.
Darkness overtook me when I was high among the lonely mountains, far
from any hut or village. A half hour later a mountain storm burst upon
me.
For what seemed an endless length of time I plunged on. Then before me I
noticed a faint gleam of light flickering through the downpour. I
splashed forward, and banged on a door beside a window through which the
light shone. The door was quickly opened, and I fell into a tiny
wine-shop. Three drinkers sat in the room. They stared stupidly for some
time while the water ran away from me in little rivers along the floor.
Then the landlord remarked, with a silly grin:
“You are all wet.”
“Also hungry,” I answered. “What’s to eat?”
“Da mangiare! Ma! Not a thing in the house.”
“The nearest inn?”
“Six miles on.”
“I suppose I must go to bed supperless, then,” I sighed, drawing my
water-soaked bundle from beneath my coat.
“Bed!” cried the landlord. “You cannot sleep here. I keep no
lodging-house.”
“What!” I exclaimed. “Do you think I am going on in this flood?”
“I keep no lodging-house,” repeated the host stubbornly.
I sat down on a bench, determined that no three Italians should throw me
out without a struggle. One by one, they came forward to try coaxing,
growling, and shouting at me, shaking their fists in my face. I stuck
stubbornly in my place. The landlord was ready to weep, when one of his
countrymen drew me to the window and offered to let me stay in his barn
across the way. I made out through the storm the dim outline of a
building, and, catching up my bundle, dashed with the native across the
road and into a stone hovel. I could feel under my feet that the floor
was nothing but the bare ground. An American cow would balk at the door
of the house of a mountain peasant of Italy; she would have fled
bellowing if she had seen the inside of the barn that came to view when
my companion lighted a lantern. He pointed to a heap of corn husks in a
corner behind the oxen and donkeys. Then, fearful of losing a moment
over the wine with his fellows, he gave the lantern a shake that put out
the light, and, leaving me in utter darkness, hurried away.
I felt my way toward the husks, narrowly missed knocking down the last
donkey in the row, and was about to throw myself down on the heap, when
a man’s voice at my feet shouted a word that I did not catch. Being in
Italy, I answered in Italian:
“Che avete? Voglio dormire qui.”
“Ach!” groaned the voice in German. “Only an accursed Italian.”
“Here, friend,” I shouted in German, poking the form with my foot. “Whom
are you calling accursed?”
The man in the husks sprang to his feet with a wild shout.
“Lieber Gott!” he shrieked, clutching at my coat and dancing around me.
“Lieber Gott! You understand German. You are no cursed Italian. God be
thanked. In three weeks have I heard no German.”
Even the asses were complaining by the time he had finished shouting and
settled down to tell his troubles. He was only another German on his
_Wanderjahr_ (year of wandering), who had strayed far south in the
peninsula, and, after losing his last copper, was struggling northward
again as rapidly as he could on strength gained from a crust of bread or
a few wayside berries each day. One needed only to touch him to know
that he was as thin as a side-show skeleton. I offered him half of a
cheese I carried in a pocket, and he snatched it with the hungry cry of
a wolf, and devoured it as we burrowed deep into the husks.
All night long the water dripped from my elbows and oozed out of my
shoes, and a bitter mountain wind swept through the cracks of the
building. I had just begun to sleep when morning broke. I rose with
joints so stiff that I could hardly move. I pounded and rubbed them for
a half hour before they were in working order. Outside a cold drizzle
was falling; but, bidding farewell to my companion of the night, I set
out along the mountain highway.
Two hours beyond the barn, I came upon a miserable group of huts crowded
together on the top of a hill. Among them was an even more miserable
inn, where I stopped for a bowl of thin soup in which had been drowned a
lump of black bread. Then still hungry, I plodded on in the drizzle.
A night of corn-husks had made me look more like a beggar than I knew.
Two miles beyond the village, I passed a ragged road-repairer and a boy
who were breaking stone at the wayside. Near by was a hedge weighted
down with blackberries, to which I hastened and fell to picking my late
dinner. The workman stared a moment, open-mouthed, laid aside his
sledge, and mumbled something to the boy. The boy left his place,
wandered down the road a short distance beyond me, and idled about as if
waiting for someone. With a half filled cap, I set off again. The boy
edged nearer to me as I approached, and, brushing against me, thrust
something under my arm and ran back to the stone-pile. In my
astonishment I dropped the gift on the highway. It was a quarter loaf of
black bread left over from the ragged workman’s dinner.
The next afternoon found me looking down upon the city of Florence, in a
vast valley where the winding Arno was bluish silver under the setting
sun. By evening I was housed in the city of the poet Dante and the
artist Michelangelo.
During my four days in Florence I lived with the poorest working class,
but spent hours each day in cathedral and galleries. Beggars were
everywhere. I paid half a franc a day for a good sized room, and bought
my food of a traveling restaurant. At night there appeared at street
corners in the unwashed section of the city men with pushcarts laden
with boiled tripe. Around them gathered jostling crowds, who continued
pushing until the last morsel had been sold. Each customer seemed to
possess but a single cent which he had carefully guarded through the
day, waiting for the coming of the tripe man. Never did the peddler make
a sale without a quarrel arising over the size of the morsel; and never
did the buyer leave until a second strip about the size of a match had
been added to his share to make up what he claimed to be the fair
weight.
I spent most of my fourth day in Florence looking at her works of art.
Late that afternoon I decided not to return to my lodging, and wandered
off along the highway to Rome. The country was still mountainous, but
the ranges were not so steep and there were more huts than to the north.
When night settled down, I could see before me a country inn on a
hilltop.
I wandered on, reached the inn, went inside, and sat down. At first the
groups of men seated before the fireplace and around the table scarcely
looked my way. When I began to speak, however, they turned to stare, and
began nodding and glancing at one another as if they said:
“Now where do you suppose he comes from?”
I did not offer to tell them, though they squirmed with curiosity.
Finally one of them, clearing his throat, hinted timidly:
“Hem, ah—you are a German, perhaps?”
“No.”
The speaker rubbed his neck with a horny hand and turned awkwardly to
look at his fellows.
“Hah, you are an Austrian!” charged another, with a scowl.
“No.”
“Swiss?” suggested a third.
“No.”
They began to show greater interest. A traveler from any but these three
countries is something to attract unusual attention in the country inns
of Italy.
“Ah!” tried a fourth member of the group. “You are a Frenchman?”
“No.”
The geographical knowledge of the party was used up. There followed a
long wrinkled-browed silence. The landlady wandered in with a pot,
looked me over out of a corner of her eye, and left slowly. The silence
grew intense. A native opened his mouth twice or thrice, swallowed his
breath with a gulp, and purred with a frightened air:
“Er, well—what country does the signore come from?”
“From America.”
A chorus of exclamations woke the cat dozing under the fireplace. The
hostess ran in, open-mouthed, from the back room. The landlord dropped
his pipe and exclaimed “Ma!” in astonishment. The slowest of the party
left their games and stories and crowded closely around me.
One man began telling what he knew of America. Among other things, he
said the railway trains of America run high up in the air above the
houses. When the others did not seem to believe it, he tried to prove it
by shouting at them. He said he had read about it in a newspaper. Then
he mentioned “Nuova York,” and asked me if it were not also true that
its buildings were higher than the steeple of the village church, and
whether the railroads were not built high to enable the people to get
into such high houses. He seemed to think that Americans never come down
to earth. When he gave me a chance to speak, I explained that what he
had read was about the New York Elevated and not about the railways of
the whole country.
Moreover, “Nuova York” meant America to the whole party. Not a man of
them knew that there were two Americas; not one had ever heard the term
“United States.” Many country people of Italy think of America as a land
somewhere far away,—how far or in what direction they have no
idea,—where wages are higher than in Italy. Countless times questions
like these were asked:
“Is America farther away than Switzerland?”
“Did you walk all the way from America?”
“Who is king of America?”
“Why! Are you a native American? I thought Americans were black!”
Finally a woman added insult to injury by asking:
“In America you worship the sun, _non e vero_?”
One evening, at a country inn, I remarked that the United States as a
whole is as large, if not larger, than Italy. My hearers were deafening
me with shouts of scorn and disbelief when a newcomer of the party came
to my assistance.
“Certainly that is right!” he cried. “It is larger. I have a brother in
Buenos Ayres, and I know. America, or the United States, as this signore
chooses to call it, has states just like Italy. The states are Brazil,
Uruguay, Republica Argentina, and Nuova York.”
The roadway between Florence and Siena winds through splendid scenery
and over mountains, from the top of which I had a complete view in every
direction of the surrounding hills and valleys. But I had little chance
to admire the scenery, for again and again I had to jump aside and vault
over roadside hedges before a team of oxen driven round a hill. These
oxen had horns that measured at least six and even seven feet from tip
to tip, so when I met two of them yoked together there wasn’t much room
left for me. Moreover, their drivers were frequently sound asleep, and
the animals wandered this way and that as they pleased all over the
highway, tossing their horns toward me. As I met them at almost every
quarter mile, I had to be watchful and quick.
I came upon Siena at last. Before me lay a broad, fertile valley with a
rocky hill rising from the center of it. The houses were scattered over
the hill, some of them on the very top, others clinging to the sides as
if fearful of falling to the bottom into the valley itself. It was
another of those up-and-down towns whose streets should be fitted with
ladders; where every householder is in danger, every time he steps out
of doors, of falling into the next block, should he by any chance lose
his hold on the front of his dwelling. I managed to climb into the city
without actually crawling on my hands and knees; but more than once I
kept my place only by clutching at the nearest building.
[Illustration: A country family returning from market. The grape casks
being empty the boys do not need to walk home.]
Two days after leaving Siena I was tramping along a highway that wound
over low mountains, between whispering forests, in utter loneliness.
Where the woods ended stretched many another weary mile, with never a
hut by the wayside. Now and then I came upon a shepherd clad in
sheepskins, sitting among his flocks on a hillside.
The sun sank while I was plodding through an endless marsh. All about me
were the whispering of great fields of reeds and grasses, and the dismal
croaking of countless frogs. Twilight faded to black night. Far away
before me the lights of Rome brightened the sky; yet hours of tramping
seemed to bring them not a yard nearer.
Forty-one miles had I covered, when three hovels rose up by the wayside.
One was a wine-shop. I went inside and found it filled with traveling
teamsters. One of them offered me a bed on his load of straw in the
stable.
He rose at daybreak and drove off, and at that early hour I started once
more on my way to Rome. The lonely road led across a windy marsh,
rounded a low hill, and brought me face to face with the ancient city
that was once the center of the civilized world.
To the right and left, on low hills, stood large buildings like those in
American cities. From these buildings a mass of houses sloped down the
hills and covered the broad valleys between them. The Tiber River wound
its way among the dull gray dwellings. Here and there a dome shone
brightly in the morning sunshine. But, towering high above all, dwarfing
everything else, stood the vast dome of St. Peter’s.
As I looked I thought of how, hundreds of years ago, people had caught
their first glimpse of Rome from this very hilltop. Before the days of
railroads, travelers had come by this same road, millions of them on
foot, and entered the city by this same massive western gateway. I
watched the steady stream of peasants, on wagons, carts, donkeys, and
afoot, pouring through this same entrance; while officers stood there,
running long slim swords through bales and baskets of farm produce.
Finally I joined the noisy, surging crowd, and was swept within the
walls.
I spent nearly a week wandering through St. Peter’s, the Vatican Art
galleries, and among the chapels, ruins, and ancient monuments of Rome.
Then I turned southward again on the road to Naples. For three days the
route led through a territory packed with ragged, half-starved people,
who toiled constantly from the first peep of the sun to the last waver
of twilight, and crawled away into some hole during the hours of
darkness. They were not much like the people of northern Italy.
Shopkeepers snarled at their customers, false coins of the smallest sort
made their appearance, and had I not looked so much like the natives
themselves I should certainly have won the attention of those who lived
by violence.
In this section the language changed rapidly. The tongue spoken in
Florence and Siena was almost foreign here. A word learned in one
village was not understood in another a half day distant. The villages
were perched at the summits of the steepest hills, up which each day’s
walk ended with a weary climb by steep paths of stones that rolled under
my feet.
For three nights after leaving Rome I had to sleep out of doors. On my
fourth day I found lodging at the wayside, in a building that was one
fourth inn and three fourths stable. The keeper, his wife, and their
many children all were barefooted. The father sat on a stool, bouncing
the baby up and down on his broad feet. Another child squatted on top of
the four-legged board that served as a table, and in a fit of
bashfulness thrust his fingers into his mouth.
“You have lodgings for travelers?” I inquired.
“Yes,” growled the owner.
“How much for bed?”
“Two cents.”
I demanded to see the lodging that could be had at such a price.
“Giovanni,” bawled the head of the house, “bring in the bed!”
A moth-eaten youth flung open the back door, and threw at my feet a
dirty grain-sack filled with crumpled straw that peeped out here and
there.
After I had rested awhile, the father bawled once more to his son, and
motioned to me to take up my bed and walk. I followed the youth out to
the stable, picking my way by the light of the feeble torch he carried.
Giovanni waded inside, pointed out to me a long, narrow manger of slats,
and fled, leaving me alone with the problem of how to rest nearly six
feet of body on three feet of stuffed grain-sack. I tried every way I
could think of, but decided at last to sleep on the bare slats and use
the sack as a pillow.
I had just begun to doze, when an outer door opened and let in a great
draft of night air, closely followed by a flock of sheep that quickly
filled the stable to overflowing. Some of the animals tried to overflow
into the manger, sprang back when they found me in it, and made their
discovery known to their companions by several long “b-a-a-s.” The news
awakened a truly Italian curiosity. The sheep started a procession, and
the whole band filed by the manger, every animal poking its nose through
the slats for a sniff. This over, each of the flock expressed its
opinion of my presence in trembling, nerve-racking bleats. They kept
this up until the youth came to tell me that it was morning, and carried
off my bed, fearful, no doubt, that I would run off with that valuable
piece of property.
[Illustration: Italian peasants returning from the vineyards to the
village.]
In spite of bruises and aches, I plodded on at a good pace, hoping by
this early start to reach Naples before the day was done. But I was
still in the country when the gloom, settling down like a fog, drove
into the highway bands of weary people and four-footed beasts, toiling
homeward from their day’s work. The route led downward. The fields
between tumble-down villages grew shorter and shorter until they
disappeared entirely, and I found myself between an unbroken row of
stone houses. The bands of home-going peasants increased to a crowd,
through which I struggled to make my way.
It was impossible to stop long enough to look about me. I finally
cornered a workman and asked how to get to Naples.
“Napoli! Ma! This is Napoli!” he bellowed, shoving me aside.
I plunged on, certain that the road must lead to the harbor and its
sailors’ lodgings. Ragged, cross-looking laborers swept against me.
Donkeys, with and without loads, brayed when their masters struck them.
Heavy ox-carts, massive wagons, here and there a horseman, fought their
way up the hill amid shrill shouts, roaring oaths, screaming yeehawing
of asses, the rumble of wheels on cobblestones, the snap of whips, the
whack of heavy sticks. I moved along with the bawling multitude before
and behind me, and a long time afterward reached level streets, and was
dragged into a miserable lodging-house by a boarding-house runner.
In Naples the business people do not wait for you to come into the shop
to ask for what you want. They come out to the street after you, or send
their runners out to invite you in. The barber walks up and down the
street, watching for men who need a shave; the merchant stands before
his door and shouts and beckons to the passing crowd to come in and see
his goods; the ticket agent tramps up and down the wharves, trying to
sell a ticket to everyone who passes; and the boarding-house runners are
everywhere, looking for the stranger within the city who has not yet
found a lodging-place.
I spent a few days in Naples, then went to Marseilles, where I lived a
month, tramping sorrowfully up and down the break-water waiting for a
chance to get work on some ship eastward bound. On the last day of
November my luck changed. The _Warwickshire_, an English steamer sailing
to Burma, put in at Marseilles and sent out a call for a sailor. I was
the first man on board, showed them my discharge from the cattle-boat,
and was “signed on” at once.
The next day I watched the familiar harbor of Marseilles grow smaller
and smaller until it faded away on the distant sky-line.