Indeed, The Inhabitants Of These Mountains And Of The Valleys Which
They Embosom Are A Rude, Half Civilized Set.
The towns and villages
among the forests of the Abruzzi, shut up from the rest of the world,
are almost like savage dens.
It is wonderful that such rude abodes, so
little known and visited, should be embosomed in the midst of one of
the most travelled and civilized countries of Europe. Among these
regions the robber prowls unmolested; not a mountaineer hesitates to
give him secret harbor and assistance. The shepherds, however, who tend
their flocks among the mountains, are the favorite emissaries of the
robbers, when they would send messages down to the valleys either for
ransom or supplies. The shepherds of the Abruzzi are as wild as the
scenes they frequent. They are clad in a rude garb of black or brown
sheep-skin; they have high conical hats, and coarse sandals of cloth
bound round their legs with thongs, similar to those worn by the
robbers. They carry long staffs, on which as they lean they form
picturesque objects in the lonely landscape, and they are followed by
their ever-constant companion, the dog. They are a curious, questioning
set, glad at any time to relieve the monotony of their solitude by the
conversation of the passerby, and the dog will lend an attentive ear,
and put on as sagacious and inquisitive a look as his master.
But I am wandering from my story. I was now left alone with one of the
robbers, the confidential companion of the chief.
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