Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-17
PICTURES FROM ITALY.
The Beautiful PeninsulaT of Southern
Italy-The Italian Laborer
Earns 16 Cents a Day.
Such Large Wages Not Obtsinable More Than
Half the Days in the Year-such
Thing as Small Farmer Unknown.
Copyright, 1901
Correspondence of the Gazette.

Correspondence of the Gazette.
BRNDIsI, ITALY, April 21.-Partly on
foot, partly by the antique cabriolet OF
provincial Italy, partly by lettiga, the
ancient lectis or litter OF the Romans ,
and partly on the backs of tiny donkeys
of wondrous shagginess and marvellous
power, have come, during the nearly
two weeks since leaving Naples, in a zig
gag course of about 400 miles, across the
intrequently travelled. little known, ever
weird and lonely, yet always transcend
entity beautiful peninsula of Southern
Italy.
This territory is that of olden Apulia.
/ Once it was part of Grecia Magma. Its
great cities were Arpinum, LucerIa, Arpi
and Canusium. In the little time / was
wandering through Apulia, 1 counted
upwards of 300 castles, modern, medic
val and in ruins, stTikingly recalling the
splendor and decay of Ireland; stood
among the few remaining relics of
Gamma, where the Romans met their
crushing defeat of B. c. PIG, and where
the historic city was finally destroyed in
1888. by Robert Guiscard, one of Tasso g
heroes; saw Barr, upon the Adriatio, still
famous as in the time of Horace, for its
fish, and loltered in the ancient abbey
and church CT St. Niccolo, where are
found the paintings of one of the earliest
Italian masters, Vivarini, and where, in
109S, Pope Urban II. held famous coun-
ell which sought to reconcile the church
of Greece with that of Rome; tramped
with genuine Italian tramp-the first
and only one of the species of which l
have ever had NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS. the
Campi Veteres. where, a trifle of 2I50
years since proconsul Tiberius Sem
pronius Gracious fell victim
confidence in the willy Lucanian
Flavus, into Potenza, where au earth
quake, in 1851, in an instant mauufac-
tured over 1000 freaks and beggars from
amputations consequent upon wounds;
passed through Melt, with its glorious
castle of the old Norman soverelgns, to
the extinct volcano, Monte Vulture, the
"Apulian Vultur" of Horace, whose
crater, overgrown with gigantic oaks
and beeches, now contains two lakes,
perched above one oE which is
THE MOST EERm MONASTERY OF EUROPE,
possibly excepting Monserrat, in Spain,
and from whose walls l could discern
the blue waters of the Mediterranean on
the west, and those of the Adri-
attic on the east; thence came with sew
eral hundred returning lowly pilgrims,
camping with them by the roadside at
night, into laramie, the ancient Taren-
tum OF the Greeks, whose wondrous
wealth gave it fatal luxury and in time,
horror, disgrace and ruin, when, in 209,
the Romans plundered it and sold 80, 600
of its people into slavery; and, finally,
crossing the eastern mountain range of
Otranto on foot, had the pleasure of set
ting my substantial American sole
leather for an exhilIrating tramp
Of ten italian miles upon the
same Appian Way, leading from
Rome to Capua, and from Capua to
Brindisi which stentorian valedictoTians
have so many times vociferously trcd,
feeling far more satisfied with my cwn
day and time than could have even SO