Italy from the Alps to Mount Etna . hed mudhovel, leading an almost inhuman existence. The Calabrese of the present day,—thegreat mass of the uncultivated population,—displays no trace of Hellenism. He mightwell derive his rude manners and customs, his tendency to blood and murder, from thatrough and barbarous people the Brettii, the disloyal deserters, who were declared by theRomans to be slaves of the State. The Calabria of to-day shows a terrible lack of cities or important hamlets, in theinterior. What there are, especially on or near the Sila, are mere disorderly, miserably 3 L 2 444 ITAL
Italy from the Alps to Mount Etna . hed mudhovel, leading an almost inhuman existence. The Calabrese of the present day,—thegreat mass of the uncultivated population,—displays no trace of Hellenism. He mightwell derive his rude manners and customs, his tendency to blood and murder, from thatrough and barbarous people the Brettii, the disloyal deserters, who were declared by theRomans to be slaves of the State. The Calabria of to-day shows a terrible lack of cities or important hamlets, in theinterior. What there are, especially on or near the Sila, are mere disorderly, miserably 3 L 2 444 ITALY. built groups of houses called Casali. These look as if they had been arrested in flighthalf way down some mountain slope, or on the edge of a precipice ; they lurk half hiddenbehind bush and shrub, and far from roads or paths. They seem to tell of a time whenthe frequent incursion of Vandal, Goth, or Saracen, drove the trembling people from thecoast, to take refuge in the mountains, and so formed these temporary REGGIO CALA1JRO. Others speak of the dark feudal days of the Middle Ages, for above them towers themoss-grown ruin of some baronial fortress, or the walls of a convent or monastery. Thetowns and villages themselves, are destitute of all attraction ; the houses, clumsy, window-less piles of stone ; the streets, unpaved dung-heaps where squalor and poverty sprout Cosenza, Nicastro, Catanzaro, and above all, Reggio, appear somewhat more pleasantseen from without, yet within all present the same picture of misery, decay, and hopelesspoverty. But poetry and poverty almost always go hand in hand ; throughout Italy they aresisters, and in Calabria twin sisters ! Let us take the hand of the more cheerful of thetwo, and descend to the strand at Reggio. We will part from the mainland with somepleasant pictures. LUCANIA, APULIA, AND CALABRIA. 445 It is the time of the vintage ! A joyous, festal time ! In the grey dawn they comefrom the mountains, the sun
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