The carob tree is one of the most beautiful of European trees, according to Mr. Lumley’s account; it attains a considerable height, and has a wide shady top, with a graceful, evergreen foliage of small glossy leaves. The wood is hard and red, and very useful; and the large pods of seed when dry, make excellent fodder for cattle: this tree is also called St. John’s bread.
But what made the greatest impression on me, was his description of a forest of date palms, near the town of Elche in Valencia. The fruit hanging on all sides, in large clusters of an orange colour, and the men swinging on ropes to gather them, formed, he says, a very striking scene. The trees were old and lofty; and their number was said to exceed two hundred thousand. Many of them had their branches bound up to a point, and covered with mats, by which process they became white; they are then cut off and sent by ship-loads from Alicant, to various parts of Italy, for the grand processions on Palm Sunday.
Mr. L. says, that the little chick pea forms a considerable part of the food of the poor in Portugal; and even common lupines, when soaked in running water to destroy their bitterness, are boiled, and sold in the market-place, and the people eat them out of their pockets. They are also used by the poor in Italy, but generally along with chesnuts, which are bruised and made into a sort of cake.
In ascending the Apennines, Mr. Lumley came to a mountain village, of very singular appearance; it gave him more the idea of a collection of huts in some savage country; no streets, no gardens, no appearance of cultivation, except a few great chesnut trees, that united their branches over the miserable houses. The people have large flocks of goats and sheep, whose milk supplies them with cheese, and whose wool is spun by the women in winter, and manufactured into a kind of stuff.
Most of the inhabitants of the Apennines depend on chesnuts, pigeons, bees, and milk, for their food; and like the natives of Auvergne, they make all their own furniture and clothes. They earn, however, a good deal by going every year to work, for the harvest season, in Lombardy and Tuscany, and the money they gain there, they bring carefully home.
The summer pastures, for the cattle of the rich plains of Tuscany, extend along the brow of the lower chain of the Apennine mountains, where there are a few huts to shelter the wandering shepherds. Those plains, he says, are scarcely habitable in hot weather, from the pestilential effects of the malaria, which produces agues and fevers, and which probably arises from the exhalations of the low stagnant marshes. He also saw a vast number of goats; one flock consisted of twelve hundred, and though apparently very wild, they come regularly to their shepherds, twice a-day, to be milked, and are always rewarded with a little salt.
He afterwards visited the vale of Arno, and travelled along the right bank of that river, at the foot of the Apennines. He describes the forests of chesnut trees, which appeared on the higher slopes of the mountains, with their fresh and beautiful verdure, as forming a singular contrast with the pale blue tint of the olive trees, which cover the lower hills. The road was bordered on each side by pretty brick houses, consisting of a single story, and separated from the road by a walled terrace, on which are commonly placed stone vases, containing flowers or orange trees, or aloes; and the house itself completely covered with vines. At the doors, or seated on shady benches, were groups of young female peasants, nicely dressed in white linen, with silk bodice, and straw hats ornamented with flowers. They are constantly employed in plaiting straw for the fine Florence or Leghorn hats; and they earn a great deal of money, which they are permitted to lay by for their dower; but out of this they pay a certain allowance to poor women, who do their share of the farm work. He was assured that a crop of two acres would supply straw sufficient for the whole manufacture of hats in Tuscany. It is the stalk of beardless wheat, cut before it is quite ripe; and the poverty of the soil, which is never manured, keeps it white.
Between Pisa and the sea, he passed through a forest of ilex. The leaves of all these trees were bitten off at the same height—just twelve feet from the ground; and, on inquiry, he found that they had been eaten by camels. He soon after saw two hundred of these animals lying on the sand, waiting to return into the wood as the day became hotter. He was much amused by a group who rose up as he approached, and who, in trotting off with their young, bounded and leaped about with a vivacity which scarcely seemed to belong to their awkward-looking figure. It is said that this Asiatic race of camels was brought into Italy, at the time of the Crusades, by the Grand Prior of Pisa. Mr. L. says they do most of the farm labour.
On this plain he saw also a herd of nearly two thousand cattle. The cows are so wild and fierce, that it is impossible to milk them; and they are killed by the torreadors with short lances, after a sort of hunt, which affords great diversion to the country people. These Tartar habits, he says, are very opposite to those of the vale of Arno, where every thing has been brought to the extreme of art and civilization.
I have been so much interested in all these circumstances, that I have sat up very late to write them for you; and though I have not got through half of them, I will now go to bed like a good girl. One word more: I must add that the shepherds in the neighbourhood of Rome, who resemble Tartars, with their long pikes and wrapped in mantles, come every evening with their flocks to seek an asylum within the walls of the city; as they dare not sleep exposed to the noxious air of the adjoining country, where there are no cottages, and where the water even is infected. They take possession of houses and palaces which have been abandoned by the inhabitants, who have been driven into the interior of the city by the malaria.