The common people of this region are nothing but children; and
ragged, dirty, and poor as they are, apparently as happy, to speak
idiomatically, as the day is long. It takes very little to please them;
and their easily-excited mirth is contagious. It is very rare that
one gets a surly return to a salutation; and, if one shows the least
good-nature, his greeting is met with the most jolly return. The boatman
hauling in his net sings; the brown girl, whom we meet descending a
steep path in the hills, with an enormous bag or basket of oranges
on her head, or a building-stone under which she stands as erect as a
pillar, sings; and, if she asks for something, there is a merry twinkle
in her eye, that says she hardly expects money, but only puts in a
“beg” at a venture because it is the fashion; the workmen clipping the
olive-trees sing; the urchins, who dance about the foreigner in the
street, vocalize their petitions for un po' di moneta in a tuneful
manner, and beg more in a spirit of deviltry than with any expectation
of gain. When I see how hard the peasants labor, what scraps and
vegetable odds and ends they eat, and in what wretched, dark, and
smoke-dried apartments they live, I wonder they are happy; but I
suppose it is the all-nourishing sun and the equable climate that do
the business for them. They have few artificial wants, and no uneasy
expectation--bred by the reading of books and newspapers--that anything
is going to happen in the world, or that any change is possible. Their
fruit-trees yield abundantly year after year; their little patches of
rich earth, on the built-up terraces and in the crevices of the rocks,
produce fourfold. The sun does it all.
Every walk that we take here with open mind and cheerful heart is sure
to be an adventure. Only yesterday, we were coming down a branch of the
great gorge which splits the plain in two. On one side the path is a
high wall, with garden trees overhanging. On the other, a stone parapet;
and below, in the bed of the ravine, an orange orchard. Beyond rises a
precipice; and, at its foot, men and boys were quarrying stone, which
workmen raised a couple of hundred feet to the platform above with a
windlass. As we came along, a handsome girl on the height had just taken
on her head a large block of stone, which I should not care to lift, to
carry to a pile in the rear; and she stopped to look at us. We stopped,
and looked at her. This attracted the attention of the men and boys in
the quarry below, who stopped work, and set up a cry for a little money.
We laughed, and responded in English. The windlass ceased to turn.
The workmen on the height joined in the conversation. A grizzly beggar
hobbled up, and held out his greasy cap. We nonplussed him by extending
our hats, and beseeching him for just a little something. Some passers
on the road paused, and looked on, amused at the transaction. A boy
appeared on the high wall, and began to beg. I threatened to shoot him
with my walkingstick, whereat he ran nimbly along the wall in terror The
workmen shouted; and this started up a couple of yellow dogs, which came
to the edge of the wall and barked violently. The girl, alone calm in
the confusion, stood stock still under her enormous load looking at us.
We swung out hats, and hurrahed. The crowd replied from above, below,
and around us, shouting, laughing, singing, until the whole little
valley was vocal with a gale of merriment, and all about nothing.
The beggar whined; the spectators around us laughed; and the whole
population was aroused into a jolly mood. Fancy such a merry hullaballoo
in America. For ten minutes, while the funny row was going on, the girl
never moved, having forgotten to go a few steps and deposit her load;
and when we disappeared round a bend of the path, she was still watching
us, smiling and statuesque.
As we descend, we come upon a group of little children seated about a
doorstep, black-eyed, chubby little urchins, who are cutting oranges
into little bits, and playing “party,” as children do on the other side
of the Atlantic. The instant we stop to speak to them, the skinny hand
of an old woman is stretched out of a window just above our heads, the
wrinkled palm itching for money. The mother comes forward out of the
house, evidently pleased with our notice of the children, and shows
us the baby in her arms. At once we are on good terms with the whole
family. The woman sees that there is nothing impertinent in our cursory
inquiry into her domestic concerns, but, I fancy, knows that we are
genial travelers, with human sympathies. So the people universally are
not quick to suspect any imposition, and meet frankness with frankness,
and good-nature with good-nature, in a simple-hearted, primeval manner.
If they stare at us from doorway and balcony, or come and stand near
us when we sit reading or writing by the shore, it is only a childlike
curiosity, and they are quite unconscious of any breach of good manners.
In fact, I think travelers have not much to say in the matter of
staring. I only pray that we Americans abroad may remember that we are
in the presence of older races, and conduct ourselves with becoming
modesty, remembering always that we were not born in Britain.
Very likely I am in error; but it has seemed to me that even the
funerals here are not so gloomy as in other places. I have looked in at
the churches when they are in progress, now and then, and been struck
with the general good feeling of the occasion. The real mourners I could
not always distinguish; but the seats would be filled with a motley
gathering of the idle and the ragged, who seemed to enjoy the show and
the ceremony. On one occasion, it was the obsequies of an officer in
the army. Guarding the gilded casket, which stood upon a raised platform
before the altar, were four soldiers in uniform. Mass was being said
and sung; and a priest was playing the organ. The church was light and
cheerful, and pervaded by a pleasant bustle. Ragged boys and beggars,
and dirty children and dogs, went and came wherever they chose--about
the unoccupied spaces of the church. The hired mourners, who are
numerous in proportion to the rank of the deceased, were clad in white
cotton,--a sort of nightgown put on over the ordinary clothes, with a
hood of the same drawn tightly over the face, in which slits were cut
for the eyes and mouth. Some of them were seated on benches near the
front; others were wandering about among the pillars, disappearing
in the sacristy, and reappearing with an aimless aspect, altogether
conducting themselves as if it were a holiday, and if there was anything
they did enjoy, it was mourning at other people's expense. They laughed
and talked with each other in excellent spirits; and one varlet near the
coffin, who had slipped off his mask, winked at me repeatedly, as if to
inform me that it was not his funeral. A masquerade might have been more
gloomy and depressing.