After three hours' ride I reached the first of these singular stations—the Rota del Dragone. Descending from the edge of the ravine towards the water, I saw a black, sooty cave before me, running, like a vault, into the cliff, below enormous blocks of granite—a few paces from its entrance the furious Restonica, chafing itself to madness among huge fragments of rock; all around, crag above crag, and dense forest. A wall of uncemented stones formed an enclosure round the entrance of the grotto. A fire was burning in the cave, round which cowered the shepherd family. A miserable-looking woman seemed to be engaged in mending some article of dress; beside her a fever-sick boy lay wrapped in a brown blanket of goat's wool, from which his pale face and glittering eyes looked out inquiringly.
The herdsman had come out of his cave, and hospitably invited me to alight, and refresh myself with new milk and cheese. I willingly accepted his invitation, and proceeded to inspect the interior of this singular cavernous abode. The grotto, I found, ran a considerable way into the mountain, affording room for a flock of two hundred goats and sheep, which the herdsman every evening brings in to milk. It was so exactly the cave of Polyphemus, that it almost seemed Homer must have taken his description from it. Every item of the description was here, even the rows of dishes full of milk, and more than a hundred flat round cheeses arranged on fresh leaves. Only Polyphemus himself was wanting; for mine host, however robber-like and wild he might look in his shaggy habiliments, was hospitality itself.
"Do the bandits ever pay you a visit?" I asked the Troglodyte. "Sometimes they do," said the man; "when they're hungry. You see the stone here on which I sit?—two years ago a couple of bandit-hunters concealed themselves in my cave; they were after Serafin. But Serafin stole in upon them through the night, and with two stabs he made them both cold upon this stone; then he went his way again into the hills."
My guide hinted that it was time to go. I thanked the herdsman for his refreshment, and rode off, not without a shudder.
The path, which now took us through the Restonica to the other bank, became constantly steeper and more difficult. At last, after a ride of two hours, I reached, thoroughly damp with mist, and during a magnificent thunderstorm, the last of the pasturing-stations on the lower heights of Rotondo. Its name is Co di Mozzo.
I had heard a great deal about the shielings of Monte Rotondo; and the pictures of them my imagination drew were original enough, slightly idyllic perhaps—little huts in the green pine-forest, or on flowery Alpine slopes, with all proper pastoral adjuncts. But now, as I rode up in the midst of thunder and lightning, and through a drizzling rain, I saw nothing but a wild waste of titanic fragments of stone—a confusion of vast granite blocks clothing the sides of a huge, gray, desolate cone. A light smoke was rising from among the stones. The gray of the watery clouds, the pale lightnings, the roll of the thunder, the rushing of the Restonica, and the deep melancholy of the gray hills, were irresistibly saddening.
Some storm-battered larches stood on the steepest edge of a naked ravine, through which the Restonica foamed and tumbled from block to block. All around, nothing but the dreariest cliffs; and one grand glimpse into the mist-filled valley out of which I had ascended. My eye sought long for the huts towards which the guide was pointing. At length I detected them among the rocks, and advancing, I soon had before me this most singular of pastoral communities. It consisted of four dwellings, erected in the most primitive manner conceivable, probably with less architectural skill than the termites or the beavers expend on their houses.
Each of these huts consists of four stone walls, built without mortar. They are about three feet in height, and support a sloping roof of sooty stems of trees and boards, on which heavy stones are laid to keep them in their places. An aperture in the front wall serves as door and principal chimney; but the smoke issues through the roof and the walls wherever it finds a chink. An enclosure of stones surrounds a narrow space before the hut, and within this space, dishes of various kinds stand; also, in one corner of it rises the palo—a rude stake with projecting pegs, on which hang pots and kettles, clothes, and strips of goat's flesh.
Some shaggy dogs sprang out as I rode up, and forthwith the men, women, and children crept from their huts, and curiously eyed the stranger. They looked picturesque enough in the midst of the stony waste; the pelone, their shaggy, brown mantle flung about them, the red baretto on their heads, and their bronzed features looking out from their dark bushy beards.
I called to them: "Friends, bestow your hospitality on a stranger who has come over the sea to visit the herdsmen of Co di Mozzo!"