A country family returning from market. The grape casks being empty the boys do not need to walk home.
Two days after leaving Siena I was tramping along a highway that wound over low mountains, between whispering forests, in utter loneliness. Where the woods ended stretched many another weary mile, with never a hut by the wayside. Now and then I came upon a shepherd clad in sheepskins, sitting among his flocks on a hillside.
The sun sank while I was plodding through an endless marsh. All about me were the whispering of great fields of reeds and grasses, and the dismal croaking of countless frogs. Twilight faded to black night. Far away before me the lights of Rome brightened the sky; yet hours of tramping seemed to bring them not a yard nearer.
Forty-one miles had I covered, when three hovels rose up by the wayside. One was a wine-shop. I went inside and found it filled with traveling teamsters. One of them offered me a bed on his load of straw in the stable.
He rose at daybreak and drove off, and at that early hour I started once more on my way to Rome. The lonely road led across a windy marsh, rounded a low hill, and brought me face to face with the ancient city that was once the center of the civilized world.
To the right and left, on low hills, stood large buildings like those in American cities. From these buildings a mass of houses sloped down the hills and covered the broad valleys between them. The Tiber River wound its way among the dull gray dwellings. Here and there a dome shone brightly in the morning sunshine. But, towering high above all, dwarfing everything else, stood the vast dome of St. Peter’s.
As I looked I thought of how, hundreds of years ago, people had caught their first glimpse of Rome from this very hilltop. Before the days of railroads, travelers had come by this same road, millions of them on foot, and entered the city by this same massive western gateway. I watched the steady stream of peasants, on wagons, carts, donkeys, and afoot, pouring through this same entrance; while officers stood there, running long slim swords through bales and baskets of farm produce. Finally I joined the noisy, surging crowd, and was swept within the walls.
I spent nearly a week wandering through St. Peter’s, the Vatican Art galleries, and among the chapels, ruins, and ancient monuments of Rome. Then I turned southward again on the road to Naples. For three days the route led through a territory packed with ragged, half-starved people, who toiled constantly from the first peep of the sun to the last waver of twilight, and crawled away into some hole during the hours of darkness. They were not much like the people of northern Italy. Shopkeepers snarled at their customers, false coins of the smallest sort made their appearance, and had I not looked so much like the natives themselves I should certainly have won the attention of those who lived by violence.
In this section the language changed rapidly. The tongue spoken in Florence and Siena was almost foreign here. A word learned in one village was not understood in another a half day distant. The villages were perched at the summits of the steepest hills, up which each day’s walk ended with a weary climb by steep paths of stones that rolled under my feet.