It was a most delightful morning. All were in the best of spirits. So they started. On for miles through interminable streets of houses that bordered the circular shore, through crowds of sheep, droves of cattle, dense masses of human beings, through which innumerable caleches darted like meteors amid the stars of heaven. Here came the oxen of Southern Italy, stately, solemn, long-horned, cream-colored; there marched great droves of Sorrento hogs--the hog of hogs--a strange but not ill-favored animal, thick in hide, leaden in color, hairless as a hippopotamus. The flesh of the Sorrento hog bears the same relation to common pork that "Lubin's Extrait" bears to the coarse scent of a country grocery. A pork-chop from the Sorrento animal comes to the palate with the force of a new revelation; it is the highest possibility of pork--the apotheosis of the pig! Long lines of macaroni-cooks doing an enormous business; armies of dealers in anisette; crowds of water-carriers; throngs of fishermen, carrying nets and singing merry songs--"Ecco mi!" "Ecco la!"--possible Massaniellos every man of them, I assure you, Sir. And--enveloping all, mingling with all, jostling all, busy with the busiest, idle with the idlest, noisy with the noisest, jolly with the jolliest, the fat, oily, swarthy, rosy--(etc., for further epithets see preceding pages)--_Lazaroni_!
Every moment produces new effects in the ever-shifting scenes of Naples. Here is the reverse of monotony; if any thing becomes wearisome, it is the variety. Here is the monotony of incessant change. The whole city, with all its vast suburbs, lives on the streets.
The Senator wiped his fevered brow. He thought that for crowds, noise, tumult, dash, hurry-skurry, gayety, life, laughter, joyance, and all that incites to mirth, and all that stirs the soul, even New York couldn't hold a candle to Naples.
Rabelais ought to have been a Neapolitan.
Then, as the city gradually faded into the country, the winding road opened up before them with avenues of majestic trees--overhanging, arching midway--forming long aisles of shade. Myrtles, that grew up into trees, scented the air. Interminable groves of figs and oranges spread away up the hill, intermingled with the darker foliage of the olive or cypress.
The mountains come lovingly down to bathe their feet in the sea. The road winds among them. There is a deep valley around which rise lofty hills topped with white villages or ancient towers, or dotted with villas which peep forth from amid dense groves. As far as the eye can reach the vineyards spread away. Not as in France or Germany, miserable sandy fields with naked poles or stunted bushes; but vast extents of trees, among which the vines leap in wild luxuriance, hanging in long festoons from branch to branch, or intertwining with the foliage.
"I don't know how it is," said the Senator, "but I'm cussed if I feel as if this here country was ground into the dust. If it is, it is no bad thing to go through the mill. I don't much wonder that these _I_talians don't emigrate. If I owned a farm in this neighborhood I'd stand a good deal of squeezin' before I'd sell out and go anywheres else."
At evening they reached Salerno, a watering-place the sea-coast, and Naples in miniature.
There is no town in Italy without its opera-house or theatre, and among the most vivid and most precious of scenic delights the pantomime commends itself to the Italian bosom. Of course there was a pantomime at Salerno. It was a mite of a house; on a rough calculation thirty feet by twenty; a double tier of boxes; a parquette about twelve feet square; and a stage of about two-thirds that size.
Yet behold what the ingenuity of man can accomplish! On that stage there were performed all the usual exhibitions of human passion, and they even went into the production of great scenic displays, among which a great storm in the forest was most prominent.