The Great St. Angelo and that region are supposed to be the haunts of
brigands. From those heights they spy out the land, and from thence
have, more than once, descended upon the sea-road between
Castellamare and Sorrento, and caught up English and German
travelers. This elevation commands, also, the Paestum way. We have
no faith in brigands in these days; for in all our remote and lonely
explorations of this promontory we have never met any but the most
simple-hearted and good-natured people, who were quite as much afraid
of us as we were of them. But there are not wanting stories, every
day, to keep alive the imagination of tourists.
We are waiting in the garden this sunny, enticing morning-just the
day for a tramp among the purple hills--for our friend, the long
Englishman, who promised, over night, to go with us. This excellent,
good-natured giant, whose head rubs the ceiling of any room in the
house, has a wife who is fond of him, and in great dread of the
brigands. He comes down with a sheepish air, at length, and informs
us that his wife won't let him go.
"Of course I can go, if I like," he adds. "But the fact is, I have
n't slept much all night: she kept asking me if I was going!" On the
whole, the giant don't care to go. There are things more to be
feared than brigands.
The expedition is, therefore, reduced to two unarmed persons. In the
piazza we pick up a donkey and his driver for use in case of
accident; and, mounting the driver on the donkey,--an arrangement
that seems entirely satisfactory to him,--we set forward. If
anything can bring back youth, it is a day of certain sunshine and a
bit of unexplored country ahead, with a whole day in which to wander
in it without a care or a responsibility. We walk briskly up the
walled road of the piano, striking at the overhanging golden fruit
with our staves; greeting the orange-girls who come down the side
lanes; chaffing with the drivers, the beggars, the old women who sit
in the sun; looking into the open doors of houses and shops upon
women weaving, boys and girls slicing up heaps of oranges, upon the
makers of macaroni, the sellers of sour wine, the merry shoemakers,
whose little dens are centers of gossip here, as in all the East: the
whole life of these people is open and social; to be on the street is
to be at home.
We wind up the steep hill behind Meta, every foot of which is
terraced for olive-trees, getting, at length, views over the wayside
wall of the plain and bay and rising into the purer air and the scent
of flowers and other signs of coming spring, to the little village of
Arola, with its church and bell, its beggars and idlers,--just a
little street of houses jammed in between the hills of Camaldoli and
Pergola, both of which we know well.
Upon the cliff by Pergola is a stone house, in front of which I like
to lie, looking straight down a thousand or two feet upon the roofs
of Meta, the map of the plain, and the always fascinating bay. I
went down the backbone of the limestone ridge towards the sea the
other afternoon, before sunset, and unexpectedly came upon a group of
little stone cottages on a ledge, which are quite hidden from below.
The inhabitants were as much surprised to see a foreigner break
through their seclusion as I was to come upon them. However, they
soon recovered presence of mind to ask for a little money. Half a
dozen old hags with the parchment also sat upon the rocks in the sun,
spinning from distaffs, exactly as their ancestors did in Greece two
thousand years ago, I doubt not. I do not know that it is true, as
Tasso wrote, that this climate is so temperate and serene that one
almost becomes immortal in it. Since two thousand years all these
coasts have changed more or less, risen and sunk, and the temples and
palaces of two civilizations have tumbled into the sea. Yet I do not
know but these tranquil old women have been sitting here on the rocks
all the while, high above change and worry and decay, gossiping and
spinning, like Fates. Their yarn must be uncanny.
But we wander. It is difficult to go to any particular place here;
impossible to write of it in a direct manner. Our mulepath continues
most delightful, by slopes of green orchards nestled in sheltered
places, winding round gorges, deep and ragged with loose stones, and
groups of rocks standing on the edge of precipices, like medieval
towers, and through village after village tucked away in the hills.
The abundance of population is a constant surprise. As we proceed,
the people are wilder and much more curious about us, having, it is
evident, seen few strangers lately. Women and children, half-dressed
in dirty rags which do not hide the form, come out from their low
stone huts upon the windy terraces, and stand, arms akimbo, staring
at us, and not seldom hailing us in harsh voices. Their sole dress
is often a single split and torn gown, not reaching to the bare
knees, evidently the original of those in the Naples ballet (it will,
no doubt, be different when those creatures exchange the ballet for
the ballot); and, with their tangled locks and dirty faces, they seem
rather beasts than women. Are their husbands brigands, and are they
in wait for us in the chestnut-grove yonder?
The grove is charming; and the men we meet there gathering sticks are
not so surly as the women. They point the way; and when we emerge
from the wood, St. Maria a Castello is before us on a height, its
white and red church shining in the sun. We climb up to it. In
front is a broad, flagged terrace; and on the edge are deep wells in
the rock, from which we draw cool water. Plentifully victualed, one
could stand a siege here, and perhaps did in the gamey Middle Ages.
Monk or soldier need not wish a pleasanter place to lounge.
Adjoining the church, but lower, is a long, low building with three
rooms, at once house and stable, the stable in the center, though all
of them have hay in the lofts. The rooms do not communicate. That
is the whole of the town of St. Maria a Castello.
In one of the apartments some rough-looking peasants are eating
dinner, a frugal meal: a dish of unclean polenta, a plate of grated
cheese, a basket of wormy figs, and some sour red wine; no bread, no
meat. They looked at us askance, and with no sign of hospitality.
We made friends, however, with the ragged children, one of whom took
great delight in exhibiting his litter of puppies; and we at length
so far worked into the good graces of the family that the mother was
prevailed upon to get us some milk and eggs. I followed the woman
into one of the apartments to superintend the cooking of the eggs.
It was a mere den, with an earth floor. A fire of twigs was kindled
against the farther wall, and a little girl, half-naked, carrying a
baby still more economically clad, was stooping down to blow the
smudge into a flame. The smoke, some of it, went over our heads out
at the door. We boiled the eggs. We desired salt; and the woman
brought us pepper in the berry. We insisted on salt, and at length
got the rock variety, which we pounded on the rocks. We ate our eggs
and drank our milk on the terrace, with the entire family interested
spectators. The men were the hardest-looking ruffians we had met
yet: they were making a bit of road near by, but they seemed capable
of turning their hands to easier money-getting; and there couldn't be
a more convenient place than this.
When our repast was over, and I had drunk a glass of wine with the
proprietor, I offered to pay him, tendering what I knew was a fair
price in this region. With some indignation of gesture, he refused
it, intimating that it was too little. He seemed to be seeking an
excuse for a quarrel with us; so I pocketed the affront, money and
all, and turned away. He appeared to be surprised, and going indoors
presently came out with a bottle of wine and glasses, and followed us
down upon the rocks, pressing us to drink. Most singular conduct; no
doubt drugged wine; travelers put into deep sleep; robbed; thrown
over precipice; diplomatic correspondence, flattering, but no
compensation to them. Either this, or a case of hospitality. We
declined to drink, and the brigand went away.
We sat down upon the jutting ledge of a precipice, the like of which
is not in the world: on our left, the rocky, bare side of St. Angelo,
against which the sunshine dashes in waves; below us, sheer down two
thousand feet, the city of Positano, a nest of brown houses, thickly
clustered on a conical spur, and lying along the shore, the home of
three thousand people,--with a running jump I think I could land in
the midst of it,--a pygmy city, inhabited by mites, as we look down
upon it; a little beach of white sand, a sailboat lying on it, and
some fishermen just embarking; a long hotel on the beach; beyond, by
the green shore, a country seat charmingly situated amid trees and
vines; higher up, the ravine-seamed hill, little stone huts, bits of
ruin, towers, arches. How still it is! All the stiller that I can,
now and then, catch the sound of an axe, and hear the shouts of some
children in a garden below. How still the sea is! How many ages has
it been so? Does the purple mist always hang there upon the waters
of Salerno Bay, forever hiding from the gaze Paestum and its temples,
and all that shore which is so much more Grecian than Roman?
After all, it is a satisfaction to turn to the towering rock of St.
Angelo; not a tree, not a shrub, not a spire of grass, on its
perpendicular side. We try to analyze the satisfaction there is in
such a bald, treeless, verdureless mass. We can grasp it
intellectually, in its sharp solidity, which is undisturbed by any
ornament: it is, to the mind, like some complete intellectual
performance; the mind rests on it, like a demonstration in Euclid.
And yet what a color of beauty it takes on in the distance!
When we return, the bandits have all gone to their road-making: the
suspicious landlord is nowhere to be seen. We call the woman from
the field, and give her money, which she seemed not to expect, and
for which she shows no gratitude. Life appears to be indifferent to
these people. But, if these be brigands, we prefer them to those of
Naples, and even to the innkeepers of England. As we saunter home in
the pleasant afternoon, the vesper-bells are calling to each other,
making the sweetest echoes of peace everywhere in the hills, and all
the piano is jubilant with them, as we come down the steeps at
sunset.
"You see there was no danger," said the giant to his wife that
evening at the supper-table.
"You would have found there was danger, if you had gone," returned
the wife of the giant significantly.