“Why, my dear madam, we have no parrot.”
I noticed a look of suspicion shoot across her face, and her manner became strangely reserved. I could see that from that moment she was extremely skeptical about anything we said. In a little while, when talking aside with some member of the family, she openly expressed her doubt that we were Americans or had ever been in America. This was laughingly repeated to me for a reassertion as to our nationality.
“What makes you think we are not Americans?” I asked the dubious visitor.
“Because you have no parrot.”
I do not hesitate to say I thought she must be demented, but in further explanation she produced a bunch of her husband’s letters to prove her statements, and, reading them through hastily, I found that there is a parrot in the saloon where he ’tends bar, and one across the street, and the things these two parrots do and say make up the burden of his letters home, so his wife was convinced that America is a land of parrots.
For days there was a constant succession of gaieties, and I was glad we were not compelled to eat and drink one tenth of what was set before us. We were loaded with messages from fathers, mothers, brothers, sweethearts, wives, children, and friends for those already in America.
The Mannino family, living across the torrente in the western section of the town, being relatives of the Squadritos, were foremost in trying to do the honors of the relationship and were much concerned that a young nephew go with us, but I saw at a glance that he had favus, and I told them he would be excluded. He was insistent and started for Naples to take a steamer of another line, having been assured that by the payment of one hundred francs to some persons at Naples he could be smuggled through. Soon a telegram came from Naples, saying the people who were going to smuggle him had robbed him of every cent. He asked for more money, it was sent him, and he sailed. I have so far failed to find any trace of him, but he did not return to Gualtieri and I believe he must have entered the United States through Canada, as this is a mode of ingress the United States is yet seeking to completely block. Of all the wealth of trickery and immigration fraud which I afterwards was able to lay my hands upon, this was the very first hint, and yet what would have been a fine specific case has escaped me.
CHAPTER VIII
THE SICILIAN COUNTRYSIDE
It seemed wise, during our stay in Gualtieri-Sicamino, to make a study of more than lay in the province of Messina, and so we pursued the same methods of research employed in the provinces of the mainland, but found the conditions of life among the Sicilians so equable with that of Gualtieri-Sicamino, that to tell what we saw elsewhere would be but to repeat what is said of the village home of the Squadritos, with the exception of a few notable incidents.
The northern side of the island is much more fertile and is therefore more densely populated than the southern slopes, which are unprotected from the hot winds from Africa; and in the mountains back from Girgenti and Sciacca where travel is quite difficult except on mule-back, the state of the people is of the most primitive sort, and a man who can read and write is a man of distinction in the community in which he lives. Some of the families are of a complexion that is nearly Malayan, and their long black hair is beautiful to see. Wherever a branch office of a steamship ticket broker has been established and emigration started, or wherever the tourist goes scattering gold, there is a marked difference from the communities where a stranger is nearly a catastrophe.