The Dupuyer acantha. [volume] (Dupuyer, Mont.) 1894-1904, 1899-07-13
IT Is LOVELY THERE.
SUNSHINE ON BORDER LINE OF
SWITZERLAND.
english People Walk All Day The
Women Wear short Skirts and Thick
Shoes and Tramp as Far as Their
MISUNDERSTANDING Sights. o

der line between Switzerland and
Italy, is full of charm, writes a Lo-
carno correspondent. We are having
our fourth week of unbroken sunshine.
On the mountain slopes, on the green
lawns OF the cool park surrounding
our hotel, and in every nook and cor
ner where soils clings to the rocks
wild flowers put up their hardy little
heads in rich profusion. Many Eng
lish ladies appear at breakfast in
'seven-league boots" as they call
their stout, thicksoled walking shoes,
and in short skirts which just meet
these boots. Their husbands are
equally comfortable in outing suits,
and while the morning is still fresh
they start in couples or in small par
ties, with pretty little peasant-woven
baskets containing lunch slung with a
strap over the shoulders of the men.
These baskets come back in the hands
of the ladies filled with flowers.
There are enticing roads that zigzag
by gentle 1nclines up the steep noun
tain side, leading at first, as one rises
above the town, past pretty villas, the
road bordered by massive stone walls,
with which Italians love to inclose
their grounds and villas. Through the
large ironwork gates of these walls
one catches a glimpse of charming gar
dens and sees mimosa trees with their
fine foliage and sweet-scented yellow
bloom, like tiny balls OF thistle. There
are also leafiess magnolia trees with a
great burden of beautiful, white bios
SONS, each large bud incased in a
natural jacket of fur, from which
bursts the stately, l~ily-shaped bios
som. In some sunny corner of the
garden, twined against a southern
or the glossy foliage of huge camelia
bushes, forming a rich background for
countless white, or pink, or scarlet
flowers, one variety resembling great
pink roses, lacking only the perfume.
Further on the road up the noun
tain side one passes vineyards where
the peasants are at work. A mar is
busy loosening the earth about his
vines; two women, with coarse sacks
over their shoulders as protection to
clothing, have slung over these the
peculiar Italian peasant basket, which
hangs upon the back and is held in
place by side pieces through which the
arms are slipped. The women are at
work over a pile of fertilizer, which
they shovel into the basket, one wom-
an standing ready with the basket
upon her back while the other shoveIs
into it. When the basket is full the
bearer trots with her burden slowly
up among the vines, and reaching a
desired spot, she deposits it in small
heaps at regular intervals of ten feet,
she ducks her head, humps her back,
and pours the contents Of the basket
over her head. Then righting herself
and giving a slight shake to readjust
the basket on her back, goes calmly
back for another load. One -devoutly
hopes she is of the safe contented mind
as the Irishman who said: "Begorry,
and I have a soft job; 1 carry the
bricks to a nan on the sixth floor, and
he does all the work"
These peasant baskets are used for
every kind of load, are in all sizes,
and are carried on all female backs.
On that of the tiniest maid in red
skirt, white Jacket, blue handkerchief
bound round the dark hair, and clat-
tering wooden jamots, who has long
sticks of coarse bread in her basket,
as we'll as the embarrassed housewife
trudging home from the market with
a couple of s~quealing pigs at the bot
tom of the basket on her back and the
bent, wrinkled woman with load of
brushwood piled so high that she is
dwarfed beneath it, making a pathetic,
striking figure in her coarse home
spun, home-dyed wooden gown of faded
blue, or green, or purple, gathered up
into a short-waisted knitted jacket, a
faded, Powered, wooden kerchief over
her thin, gray hair and wooden sa-
bots, which she must have had since
childhood, as the heels of her worsted
hose protrude two inches beyond the
length of the poor old sabots. Con-
tinuing an ascent of the mountain
road by carriage or by foot, one has
glimpses of dark ravines through
which rivulets, from the snow beds
above, dash with foam and murmur
over stony beds. Through the dead
leaves by the roadside, among clam
boring vines, and in and out of the
crevices in old walls, dart hundreds of
tiny lizards, and everywhere are yell
low primroses, crocuses, daisies, and
violets.