We walk briskly up the
walled road of the piano, striking at the overhanging golden fruit
with our staves; greeting the orange-girls who come down the side
lanes; chaffing with the drivers, the beggars, the old women who sit
in the sun; looking into the open doors of houses and shops upon
women weaving, boys and girls slicing up heaps of oranges, upon the
makers of macaroni, the sellers of sour wine, the merry shoemakers,
whose little dens are centers of gossip here, as in all the East: the
whole life of these people is open and social; to be on the street is
to be at home.
We wind up the steep hill behind Meta, every foot of which is
terraced for olive-trees, getting, at length, views over the wayside
wall of the plain and bay and rising into the purer air and the scent
of flowers and other signs of coming spring, to the little village of
Arola, with its church and bell, its beggars and idlers,--just a
little street of houses jammed in between the hills of Camaldoli and
Pergola, both of which we know well.
Upon the cliff by Pergola is a stone house, in front of which I like
to lie, looking straight down a thousand or two feet upon the roofs
of Meta, the map of the plain, and the always fascinating bay. I
went down the backbone of the limestone ridge towards the sea the
other afternoon, before sunset, and unexpectedly came upon a group of
little stone cottages on a ledge, which are quite hidden from below.
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