Morning journal and courier., 1891-01-03

among the mountains of Italy. They gen. erally live in the villages, the wife and daughters engaging in the vineyards, gath ering olives or chestnuts, and often as shepherdesses with small focks. The fathers and sons go from one forest to an- other as the owners desire charcoal made. The landlord secures the felling and cut ting of the trees, and the carbonaro sim ply attends to building and firing the pyres and watching day and night their smouldering progress. In this labor the sons share, and regular watches are taken. The logs are stood on end in round piles of perhaps eighteen feet in diameter. cov- cred and chinked with messy earth, and then fired in a central hollow which has been filled with chips of dry timber, fir cones, chips from the logs and dead leaves and grass. Once well ablaze, this flaming funnel is covered with moss and earth and the pile is then left to smoulder for five or six days. When reduced to carbone or charcoal the carbonaro delivers it to the owner packed in sacks, two sacks compri- sing donkey-load, for which he receives about ten cents, or about two dollars for each burning, yielding forty sacks. At this camp, an unusually large one, a score or more carbonan were at work; and, as the burning was to be for an extended pe- riod, some six or eight of the carbonari had built temporary huts and had re- moved their entire families to the forest.
 This gave life and picturesqueness to the scene, especially at night. A few iron sressets had been fastened to the tree trunks, and the crackle and fiarings of cones and knots lent weird colorings to the motley groups of women with dazzling teeth and eyes, and men grimy and swarth beyond all description l could not re- the saaffndr -har I at ,,1l wanderings with my gipsy friends again; and as the night gathered close its sable wing over the majestic forest-trees above and, one by one some strange instrument of music was produced from the shadowy huts, while melody and dancing added their fascination to the wild. strange scene, thousand recOllections of days with the Rommany swept back on Prato- magno's parkened heights. Deeper still grew this feeling as l was shown to a couch of fir branches for sleep It came not for hours; for in the gentle soughing of tbe frs, the calls of the watchers to each other, and here and there through the camp suppressed tones of melody, as those who watched grouped together and reassuringly sang low and soft the stor- nelli of Italy, I was with my loved vaga- bond friends by their witching camp-fires in my own loved land
 When the morning came after break fast of pan unto. bread fried in olive oil. and many a kindly ''addio.'' and 'vale!'' from my grimy hosts, I found my own way back to Tosi On such a June morn ing as that in which I journeyed, the songs of birds, the Eolian music of forest breezes, so bewitch one all the way from Tosi, that suddenly and without warning you are at the enchanting mauntain eerie of Vallombrosa. The spot itself compri- ses but & few acres of level meadow, through which runs a long avenue of stately trees At the end of this avenue stand the hchened and gray old buildings. On one side of the sunny opening miles on miles of frs rise in serried ranks to the very top of Pratomagno: on the other thousands of chestnut trees glow in their golden foliage. Behind ard above hosts