“No, there is no cart around here now.”
“How about a donkey or two?”
The station-master swept the surrounding country with hand-shaded eyes and shook his head deprecatingly.
“No, all that I can see are carrying loads of grapes.”
Seven miles’ tramp in that dust and sun with our luggage, which contained photographic things too precious to leave out of our sight!
Half a mile from the station we passed three women going along in a sort of dog-trot with great baskets of figs, just picked, on their heads, a rolled-up bit of cloth between head and basket.
“I think I have the point of view of those women,” said my wife’s voice from the pillar of dust that surrounded and hid her as the salt did Mrs. Lot.
In a short time a farmer who had been on our train overtook us. He was carrying a heavy sack of things the neighbors had commissioned him to buy in Messina, and in one hand he bore two salt cod, still dripping with brine. Later I learned that salt fish are a delicacy in Sicily and that the south of Europe is one of the best markets for Gloucester fishermen. My imperfect Italian caught his ear at once, and when he learned that my native tongue was English he demanded eagerly whether I had been in America or not; and when I answered in the affirmative he said I must excuse him, but were we not the friends that rich young Antonio Squadrito was expecting? Reluctantly enough I said we were, for my parting words with young Squadrito on leaving the Lahn were that he should keep our coming quiet and say nothing as to our nationality. There was very little now in our appearance or conduct to show we were Americans, and all through our travels we took refuge in the wide disparity of North of Italy dialects from the Sicilian, and those persons who did not think us Milanese or Turinese knew we must be French or Spanish—except in Gualtieri. There Antonio had let the cat out of the bag. As a result the whole town had been in a state of exalted expectancy for weeks. The people had a carreta, one of the open, springless mule carts, trimmed and decorated ready to be sent to meet us, and in fact our arrival was to be a public festival, but there was one slip—I had not sent Antonio a letter or telegram, and so we plodded on in the dust unmet and unwelcomed.
The farmer announced himself as our friend and said he would guide us straight to the Squadrito house, for he had a cousin in America, close to New York,—in Cincinnati in fact,—and, with the blessing of the Holy Mother, if his wife ever got well enough, he was going there too, taking her and the family.
We might have been a traveling circus or an army with banners. Of every five people we met, two at least turned to escort us back to the town, while the news of our arrival was shouted to the inmates of every house we passed and to the hundreds of men, women and children who were toiling in the fields. We overtook a flock of sheep being driven two miles to water, and soon we formed the van of the most picturesque cavalcade imaginable—men, women, sheep, babies, donkeys and goats. At a distance the country looked sparsely settled. Close at hand we found that it veritably swarmed with life, for the average population is 2,500 souls to the square mile.