308 NATHANIEL SOUTHGATE SHALER 



language of Dante than that of the city or even the village folk. The most 

 wonderful thing about him was his cloak. These shepherd cloaks are of the 

 fashion set by Jacob. I believe that they may have existed as garmental 

 entities since the time of the CaBsars, renewed each year in parts, but peren- 

 nial as wholes ; their system of construction gives them no natural end, they 

 may outlast a race. 



It is the time of carnival, and some special saint's day has doubled the 

 obligation to make a noise. All the while I was upon the hills there came 

 from the invisible villages which were crowded in the narrow valleys at 

 their feet an almost ceaseless ringing of church bells. These narrow valleys 

 carried a sound of bells for great distances. After you have walked for hours 

 in hills, wild and remote looking as those of Colorado, the rhythmic beat 

 of some church chime will start in the air about you and appear to come 

 from every side. The effect is singularly awe-inspiring, for the sound seems 

 ethereal, such as the skies might send down. 



There are considerable quarries in these hills, but in them the modern 

 contrivances of cranes and tramways are unknown ; except that a little gun- 

 powder is used there is no difference between the present methods and those 

 of the most ancient days. 



Descending to the east of the mountain, I came into a valley watered by a 

 swift, clear stream. I followed the stream toward the plain, passing through 

 the village of Figline, where there was a great crowd by the bridge, watching 

 with bucolic interest the process of butchering some well-grown pigs. In 

 this, as in everything else, the country people showed their utter want of 

 contrivance. The dead beasts lay sprawled in the mud while the butchers 

 were trying to remove the hair by wisps of burning straw, or to clean them 

 in the same uncomfortable position. I wish the social philosophers would tell 

 us why inventiveness increases with the latitude and finds its zero at the 

 equator. It is not a matter of willingness to labor, for I have never seen a 

 more devotedly industrious people than these Tuscans; they have quick 

 minds, are pliant and fertile in speech, fairly introspective, and yet they 

 meet the world of fact in a dumb, helpless way. 



So intent was Figline on the pig-killing that I slipped through the crowd 

 without being observed. Neither my look of northern forests all for- 

 eigners are forestieri, or men of the woods, to these people nor my ham- 

 mer, bag, and maps caught the intent eye of the people, who usually per- 

 ceive the stranger afar off. Soon after leaving the village, the brook I had 

 followed for some miles and with which I had fallen quite in love ceased its 

 noise and began to creep silently over the plains. On either side were dykes, 

 at first low but growing higher until the stream stalked along on stilts with 

 its bed of rolled stones above the level of the grain-fields between which it 



