There are few stretches of roadway in Italy that wind through finer scenery than that panorama which spreads out along the highway between Florence and Siena. The pedestrian, however, finds small opportunity to contemplate the landscape, for his progress is beset with strange perils. Each peasant of this section possesses a yoke of white oxen, a bovine type indigenous to the Apennine region, the distinguishing feature of which is the length of the horns, measuring often six and even seven feet from tip to tip. Now meet two such beasts, yoked together, and it is a wide highway that leaves you room to pass. Moreover, their drivers being invariably sound asleep, the animals wander at sweet will about the right of way, tossing their heads toward the passer-by. When one considers that every twenty or twenty-five acres through this territory constitutes a farm, that every farmer has his pair of oxen, and that he does his best to lay out his work in such a manner as to give him the greatest possible amount of time on the road, leaving real labor to his wife and daughters, it is easily understood that to make one’s way on foot, requires no mean amount of vigilance, nimbleness, and endurance.
Nor is that all. On every highway of Europe the wayfarer must be always on the alert for the sound of an automobile horn. Continental chauffeurs have small respect for foot-travelers, and the pedestrian who does not heed their imperative honk is quite apt to come into collision with a touring-car moving at its highest rate of speed. Now the first note of protest of an over-burdened ass bears a similarity to the toot of an automobile horn that can scarcely be accounted for under the head of coincidences. Moreover, the time ensuing between the first and second notes is quite long enough for a car to shoot around a corner, send the unobserving wanderer skyward, and disappear into the gasoline-saturated Beyond. In consequence, my journey from Florence to Siena was no pleasure stroll; for when I was not vaulting roadside hedges before oncoming oxen, I was crouching on the edge of the highway, peering anxiously round a turn of the route until a second asinine vocable broke on my ear.
He who would obtain an exact idea of the ensemble of the city of Siena has but to dump a spoonful of sugar on a well-heaped dish of rice. Some of the grains remain at the very top of the heap, others cling tenaciously to the sides as if fearful of falling to the bottom into the dish itself. For rice, read a rocky hill; for sugar, houses; for dish, a broad, fertile valley in which space is unlimited, and the visualization of Siena is complete. Except in that small quarter on the flat summit of the hill it is one of those up-and-down towns in which streets should be fitted with ladders; where every householder is in imminent danger, each time he steps out of doors, of falling into the next block, should he inadvertently lose his grip on the façade of his dwelling. I scaled the city without being reduced to the indignity of making the ascent on hands and knees; but more than once I kept my place only by clutching at the flanking buildings.
How little the knowledge of the world among the masses of Italy has increased, since the days of Columbus, was suggested during my evening in the perennial inn at the summit of the town. Engaged in a game of “dama” (checkers) with the innkeeper’s small daughter, I strove at the same time to satisfy the curiosity of the host himself and a band of strolling musicians, of whom a blind youth accompanied both game and conversation on a soft-voiced violin.
“When you go to America,” asked the innkeeper, pointing out a move to my opponent, “you get clear out of sight of land, non è vero?”
I admitted that such experiences were common.
“Ah, I once thought of going to America,” he cried, turning to impress upon the attentive audience his fearlessness in having dared to conceive so intrepid a venture, “until they told me that. But you wouldn’t catch me on a boat that went clear out of sight of land. I don’t mind a trip from Genoa to Naples, or even to Bastia, where you always have the coast alongside; but when you leave the land and jump out into the universe, steering by the stars and going—La Santissima Vergine knows where—ah, not for me! Why, suppose the captain loses his way when the stars move? You come to the edge of the world and over you go. Ugh!”
The audience shuddered in sympathy, and the blind youth drew forth from his instrument a wail such as might have risen from the victims of so dreadful a fate.
By the time a new topic had been broached the hostess wandered in and sat down before the register in which I had written my autobiography. Her eyes fell on the figures indicating my age.
“Aha!” she cried, jabbing the number with a stubby forefinger and winking good-humoredly, “soldiering is hard work, to be sure. I don’t blame you a bit. Officers are hard masters.”