The Newtown bee., 1909-02-12
" asbinetoE.
A FINE LECTURE.

Tribune staff, who accompanied the committee sent by the U. 5. Senate into ltal. for the purposes Of inyesti- gating the sources of immigration, lectured on this subject before the towrspeople and large audience from the three boarding schools. MT Sherwood was formerly Gunnery student and at one time resident of Washington. He contributes to The Outlook, has travelled extensively and uses first class machine for stereopticon work. His Italian views which were secured by himself in the spring of 1907, are particularly good and gave especial pleasure to num- Der in the audience who had either lived or travelled in Italy. The jour ney which the lecturer took with his audience into the interior of Calabria was full of interest,fo there are no railroads in this m 'untainous regivn, except those which skirt the shores and travellers rarely visit the noun tain villages, where the slow prog .esS of the party's al tom0o le up tue zig gag roads was watched by the inhabi- tants of the towns, who looked down
 from their balconies as from battle ments and who could be seen passing
 along the news of the autos ap- preach, so that a crowd was already assembled m the town street when
 the next settlement was reached.
 leaving Calahria on the Palermo ex- press from Naples, one could quickly see from the car windows what forces had loosened up such an avalanche of human beings from the hillsides of Southern Italy and sent them far from their mountain homes to Ameri- ca. The treeless hills were as rocky as our New England slopes and deep
 ly scored with dry stony water courses, which showed the poverty of the soil and what will overtake every nation which does not protect its for est resources. The fields with their high walls were Watered from the wells the water being drawn forth by crude wooden mechanisms operated by the stolid and omnipresent donkey but tl.ese being hillside terraces were made to blossom as the rose" Leav- ing the train at Messina, which had
 been so m any times destroyed by
 earthquakes that it had little off. l terest to the party they left the fated city by way of the valley of dry
 riyer-bed and climbed over the tree
 less hills to Gesso by roads which
 wound like white macadamized rib
 bon, labyrinthine fashion, until the
 mind was ready to believe a map oi
 the path traversed would look like a
 seismograph chart. As one climbed
 wider and wider views were caught
 of the band of deep blue water flow 1 ing between Scylla and CharyhJis
 ancient Rhegium cleaning on the fal
 side and the theatrical background of
 deeply scared Calabrian hills, theil
 colors of garnet, rose, pink and green
 softened by blue haze. The ve-
 hicles met with were high two
 wheeled farm carts drawn, by small
 horses trapped in red and brass, and
 driven by good .ns tured peasants
 The sides of the carts were gay with
 scenes from Sicilian history painted
 in the primary colors. z Tine streets of Gesso, the first stop. ping place down the mountainside
 were almost as deserted as Pompeii l A few years ago this village had 3
 population of about 6000 Today the
 houses with their Worm-eaten doors
 are paopied 5v only about 1900 won
 en, children and old men who art
 supported largely by money sent iron
 America by the able-hodied who havt gone thence. In our walks through the town one could not count more than dozen men in the prime of life Browning the hill on the far side a one looked toward the snow-streaket A cloud .wreathed summit of Etna wal a village apparently of the size al Gesso. Within a few years, the guid' informed the party, this village hat 7 sent two-thirds of its population t An erica I. was learned on the auto mobile trip from Reggie de Ca!abri; \ through Basilicata to Naples as tn, party passed through Scilla tha nearly one-ffth of the former pOpu lation of about 10,u0O had gone t, ' lands across the Atlantic. \ 0 .Coasting around the curves, whic \ reminded one of shaking hands wit { the engineer from the rear platform o
 a Shepaug train, the lecturer reache
 Bagnara, This town, perhaps 9 mile from Reppio. lies stretched out in il