“Is America farther away than Switzerland?”
“Did you walk all the way from America?”
“Who is king of America?”
“Why! Are you a native American? I thought Americans were black!”
Finally a woman added insult to injury by asking:
“In America you worship the sun, non e vero?”
One evening, at a country inn, I remarked that the United States as a whole is as large, if not larger, than Italy. My hearers were deafening me with shouts of scorn and disbelief when a newcomer of the party came to my assistance.
“Certainly that is right!” he cried. “It is larger. I have a brother in Buenos Ayres, and I know. America, or the United States, as this signore chooses to call it, has states just like Italy. The states are Brazil, Uruguay, Republica Argentina, and Nuova York.”
The roadway between Florence and Siena winds through splendid scenery and over mountains, from the top of which I had a complete view in every direction of the surrounding hills and valleys. But I had little chance to admire the scenery, for again and again I had to jump aside and vault over roadside hedges before a team of oxen driven round a hill. These oxen had horns that measured at least six and even seven feet from tip to tip, so when I met two of them yoked together there wasn’t much room left for me. Moreover, their drivers were frequently sound asleep, and the animals wandered this way and that as they pleased all over the highway, tossing their horns toward me. As I met them at almost every quarter mile, I had to be watchful and quick.
I came upon Siena at last. Before me lay a broad, fertile valley with a rocky hill rising from the center of it. The houses were scattered over the hill, some of them on the very top, others clinging to the sides as if fearful of falling to the bottom into the valley itself. It was another of those up-and-down towns whose streets should be fitted with ladders; where every householder is in danger, every time he steps out of doors, of falling into the next block, should he by any chance lose his hold on the front of his dwelling. I managed to climb into the city without actually crawling on my hands and knees; but more than once I kept my place only by clutching at the nearest building.