When I see how hard the peasants
labor, what scraps and vegetable odds and ends they eat, and in what
wretched, dark, and smoke-dried apartments they live, I wonder they
are happy; but I suppose it is the all-nourishing sun and the equable
climate that do the business for them. They have few artificial
wants, and no uneasy expectation--bred by the reading of books and
newspapers--that anything is going to happen in the world, or that
any change is possible. Their fruit-trees yield abundantly year
after year; their little patches of rich earth, on the built-up
terraces and in the crevices of the rocks, produce fourfold. The sun
does it all.
Every walk that we take here with open mind and cheerful heart is
sure to be an adventure. Only yesterday, we were coming down a
branch of the great gorge which splits the plain in two. On one side
the path is a high wall, with garden trees overhanging. On the
other, a stone parapet; and below, in the bed of the ravine, an
orange orchard. Beyond rises a precipice; and, at its foot, men and
boys were quarrying stone, which workmen raised a couple of hundred
feet to the platform above with a windlass. As we came along, a
handsome girl on the height had just taken on her head a large block
of stone, which I should not care to lift, to carry to a pile in the
rear; and she stopped to look at us.
Pages:
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303