a foot in diameter, with a hole through the middle; its consistency resembled that of cold pancake.  And the drink!  At least I might hope to solace myself with an honest draught of red wine.  I poured from the thick decanter (dirtier vessel was never seen on table) and tasted.  The stuff was poison.  Assuredly I am far from fastidious; this, I believe, was the only occasion when wine has been offered me in Italy which I could not drink.  After desperately trying to persuade myself that the liquor was merely “rough,” that its nauseating flavour meant only a certain coarse quality of the local grape, I began to suspect that it was largely mixed with water—­the water of Squillace!  Notwithstanding a severe thirst, I could not and durst not drink.

Very soon I made my way to the kitchen, where my driver, who had stabled his horses, sat feeding heartily; he looked up with his merry smile, surprised at the rapidity with which I had finished.  How I envied his sturdy stomach!  With the remark that I was going to have a stroll round the town and should be back to settle things in half an hour, I hastened into the open.

CHAPTER XV

MISERIA

“What do people do here?” I once asked at a little town between Rome and Naples; and the man with whom I talked, shrugging his shoulders, answered curtly, “C’e miseria”—­there’s nothing but poverty.  The same reply would be given in towns and villages without number throughout the length of Italy.  I had seen poverty enough, and squalid conditions of life, but the most ugly and repulsive collection of houses I ever came upon was the town of Squillace.  I admit the depressing effect of rain and cloud, and of hunger worse than unsatisfied; these things count emphatically in my case; but under no conditions could inhabited Squillace be other than an offence to eye and nostril.  The houses are, with one or two exceptions, ground-floor hovels; scarce a weather-tight dwelling is discoverable; the general impression is that of dilapidated squalor.  Streets, in the ordinary sense of the word, do not exist; irregular alleys climb above the rugged heights, often so steep as to be difficult of ascent; here and there a few boulders have been thrown together to afford a footing, and in some places the native rock lies bare; but for the most part one walks on the accumulated filth of ages.  At the moment of my visit there was in progress the only kind of cleaning which Squillace knows; down every trodden way and every intermural gully poured a flush of rain-water, with occasionally a leaping torrent or small cascade, which all but barred progress.  Open doors everywhere allowed me a glimpse of the domestic arrangements, and I saw that my albergo had some reason to pride itself on superiority; life in a country called civilized cannot easily be more primitive than under these crazy roofs.  As for the people, they had a dull, heavy aspect; rare as must be the apparition of a foreigner among them, no one showed the slightest curiosity as I passed, and (an honourable feature of their district) no one begged.  Women went about in the rain protected by a shawl-like garment of very picturesque colouring; it had broad yellow stripes on a red ground, the tones subdued to a warm richness.