306 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



the sunless aspect of things, made it as forbidding a dwelling as one often 

 sees. The place seemed very old ; its present inmates may have been the last 

 of half a hundred tenants of its sombre space. The memory turns with 

 pleasure from these tomb-like dwellings, from the momentary prisoners 

 of the place, to the frontiersman's log cabin, or the New England wooden 

 cottage, that thoroughly belongs to its possessor, fits his momentary needs, 

 and is as much a part of his individuality as a snake's skin or the burrow 

 of a rabbit. All modern Italy is in the prison of antiquity. 



After I had enriched my guide by purchasing a lot of his polished stones 

 we went again into the fields. . . . The serpentines at Impruneta are sin- 

 gularly varied in their structure and of wonderful beauty. In no small 

 acquaintance with stones I have never seen more beautiful bits than can 

 be found here. When polished they are natural mosaics. Yet they are and 

 always have been quite unused. This people have so little sense of natural 

 beauty that they would always prefer a Roman scarf to a rainbow. 



Before the day at Impruneta was ended I climbed a hill that gave a fine 

 view to the southwest. Travelling in the valleys of Italy one is apt to con- 

 ceive it as a very fertile land ; such it is near the streams and on some of the 

 mountain-spurs, but from the highlands we look over vast wastes of sterile 

 mountains that give only a scanty pasture to little flocks of sheep and goats. 

 Even in this garden region of Tuscany the average fertility is less than that 

 of New Hampshire. On my walk I fell in with some woodcutters at their 

 mid-day meal, to which they were reclining on couches of brush ; a loaf of 

 bread in the substantial form of a small grindstone, and Florence flasks of 

 the reddened water that does duty here for wine, was their diet. This three 

 times a day, with some bits of pork or mutton on feast days, makes the staple 

 of their food. Yet they are a capitally conditioned race. They are never tall, 

 rarely misshapen, but a remarkably even, serviceable-looking lot of men 

 and women. The women I met in my roving walks, which led us by small 

 households, were all busy with their straw-weaving and seemed to have no 

 household cares. The bread is baked by the baker and the wine is made once 

 a year. This is the staple of all meals that have been eaten by the peasant 

 since before the time of Rome. The warming of the household is carried on 

 by means of a pot of ashes with a live coal buried in it ; at the start it is urged 

 to its fiery course by means of a small paper fan. When well alight it will 

 give out about as much heat as a small kitten ; but by nursing it in their 

 hands and putting it under their garments the aged women seem to keep 

 warm enough to braid straw and gossip. 



The next tramp of which there are notes is in the region 

 between Prato and Monte Ferrato. 



