Morning journal and courier., 1891-01-10

through holding themselves aloof from all other peasant classes, are almost distinct race. In ancient times all this country was subject to soourging depredations by the Saraeens, to an extent requiring that people should herd together in walled towns for protection of life and property Apulia were shepherds. They drove their herds from the towns to the mountains, returning for safety st night. The de- scendents of these in direct line for more than two thousand years are doing that identical thing to-day, not for safety, but from traditional custom. All those who exist in southern Italy to-day who are not shepherds, goatherds or herdsmen form the population of cities and towns and comprise the contadini or field laborers: and the ancestors of all these may be said to have gradually grown away from the shepherds life, rather than that the shep- herds of our time are product of new forms of rural economic necessities. They rarely internarry with other classes When they do they instantly depart from the hocks, are absorbed in lower orders of the cities, or become the most desperately hopeless of the human cattle that labor in the fields. The pride in their own de- scent, in the exclusiveness of their class, in the long line of shepherd ancestry they can trace, amounts almost to a passion. It is practically the one pride they pos sess. This isolation of blood and interest has preserved interesting tracesin physiog- nomy. They are wonderfully Saracenie in their look. The tall, slender, supple figure, the oval face and shining skin, the neck, tiny at the throat, spreading quickly and heavily in protuberent muscles, like broad-butted tree, to the shoulders, the yellowish-blue tinge of the white of the eye, the distended nostrils, and the dag zling teeth, all pronounce the eastern ori- gin and retained physiological afinities. In every part of southern Italy you will come upon broad, grass-grown highway. It is called the 'traturo." For twenty centuries it has served the same purpose It can be nearly hkened to our own vast western stock-trails leading from grass to grass" when herds are driven north | ward, fattening on their way to the great livestock markets. On this "'traturo' oc- CUTS the yearly spring exodus from the lower valleys and coastwise moors and | marshes to the Apulian mountain summer pastures. In the autumn hundreds of | thousands return along these ancient ways. During the winter the herdsmen and shep-
 
 | the towns and villages. The herds and | focks are then driven out to and returned | from daily grazing. But in the summer | time on the mountain-sides is the real out | door life of the guardian of the fiocks and herds. Whether he be herdsman, goat | herd or shepherd, he is usually given charge of a flock or herd of from fifty to one hundred animals. Among the cattle, and herding in common with them, are large numbers of 8 species of buffalo, smaller and less hairy than the now s1- | tinct American bison- In a herd of one | hundred cattle twenty will be provided I with unmusical bells. In a focks of as many sheep twice ae many will have bells, some eff which are exceedingly melodious: l and the quality of his bells are of more | concern to the Apulian shepherd than that of his sheep. The latter are odd little | poddy creatures. Nearly all ase black. Their legs and hoofs are black and shiny | as ebony drum sticks. Their eyes are ex- ceeding small and brilliant yellow; while the little creatures are as agile as chamois. Weird, strange groups are these which fol- | low the fiocks and herds to the mountains. Nearly every shepherd of southern Italy is married. He marries young. He rears, or rather there grows, seemingly all un- l conscious to himself, large family. The sons marry other shepherds daughters; | the daughters other shepherds sons. | Himself perhaps born in the grass by the side of the ''traturo," in a cleft of some | rock in the edge of a torrents gravina, or in some low hut on hill or moor, he emerges from babyhood to childhood a mo- mad; is a nomad in youth and manhood; he mates as nomad; and never ceases a nomadic life until the quicklime of some village Campo Santo consumes his bones. So that to every flock belongs family.
 The tatterdemalion group possesses no home but that of the daily grazing land of the flock. Their sole possessions never equal five dollars in value. Their total I earnings do not exceed eleven cents per day. Like Wallachian gipsies they squat anywhere for rest and sleep, and eat any thing that will sustain life. If they pos sess single aspiration on earth it is that secret one of so many other Italian field and moor laborers to "take to the hills, " that is to become outright brigands. Uni versal indolence and repugnance to effort are safeguards against this The Apulian shepherd himself is a picturesque fellow | enough, despite your consciousness of his vacuous ignorance, his unvarying cruelty to his fiocks and his utter sodden, rather than active, brutality to his wife and chil- dren, who serve as his pack-mules, like the American squaws, for transporting his slender belongings to the hills. Tall, and straight as an arrow, he is clad from head to foot in undressed skins. A bifurcated garment of untanned hide, fashioned after the pattern of that one so well known tc American dress reform ladies, forms a sort
 of waistcoat and trowsers combined. The latter are opened at the sides, below tht
 knees often displaying gaudy buttons or
 namenting the sides of his half f-gaiter, un
 dressed skin boots. Over his waistcost ii | long, loose armless jacket of hide, pro
 yided with numberless pockets, his rain
 proof storehouses of meager treasures. 4 iaunty, brigandish hat sets perkily upon
 his fine, curly head, and brings into strik ing relief his olive skin, his large, grave
 eyes and crinkly, curly beard-a hali Egyptian type, one would say, to see it re
 produced in painting. Slung from hi'
 right shoulder across his left hip by {
 broad band of hide, with occasionally ths
 priceless treasure of a polished brass ol
 bronze buckle, is the inseparable capsells
 or shepherds pouch. 4 rusty carbine
 which is never discharged, or stout staff
 as high as his breast-but never the shep
 herds crook of olden tales and modern ts
 leaux vivants-complete the picture. And it is always picture; for this fellow witt
 the face of an apostle and the eyes of [
 saint is so deliciously languid and inex
 pressibly lazy that his splendid form ii
 forever in pose and repose.
 Il On the mountain-sides the life of thii
 shepherd family is a changeless one thu
 whole summer long, unless the terrible
 hail-storns of southern Italy fall upon tn,
 mountain, or the still more destructive
 wind-storms, that frequently fling botf
 shepherds and fiocks from the crags tS
 death, come whistling over the peak ol
 bowling through gravina. Then the hu man marmot awakens from his lethargy
 and accomplishes prodigious feats o
 strength and wondrous acts of valor, ii
 rescuing endangered members of the focl
 or of his own terrified brood. His food il
 polenta and chestnut-hour bread. He ii
 the one Italian who drinks water instead