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323

(1887) [MARC] Author: Viktor Rydberg Translator: Alfred Corning Clark With: Hans Anton Westesson Lindehn
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Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - Pencil Sketches in Rome - 4. La Campagna di Roma

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PENCIL SKETCHES IN ROME. 323
half savage glances, and sit high in the saddle, in their
dress of leather breeches, cloak and peaked hat, with
lance at the pommel, gun over the shoulder and knife in
the belt. If one have ever seen a biittero pursue and
catch a young horse to be tamed, or the oxherd, with
lowered lance, drive with wild cries his herd before him,
he will not forget that sight. More peaceful seems the
shepherd’s life, when his charges feed in scattered flocks
around the antique monuments, while the curly-headed,
dark-eyed, half naked boy who watches them sits, staff in
hand, gathered up on a grave-stone, or upon the ruins of
an old-time villa, sunken in dreams, or calling forth
mournful notes from his pipe. Towards summer, the
herds go higher and higher up into the mountains. In
the autumn they come down again, in numbers even to
ten thousand, led and driven by the herdsmen and their
aids,—the shaggy white Campagna dogs, which are ad-
mirable at their work, but are looked on with no favor
by strangers making excursions out on the Campagna,
on account of the white teeth and the angry bark with
which they greet every one who is not clothed in sheep-
skin, or in the peaked hat and leather breeches.
Here and there on the plain, is to be seen a small
pyramidal building with a cross on the top. The hut is
built of reeds over a light wooden frame, and held to-
gether by hempen ropes. A rude bed of boards with a
few skins, a basket, from which a little new-born campa-
gnolo reaches its arms out towards the man, a gun on the
wall, a few cooking utensils and a milk-pail on the floor,
are the usual contents of the herdsman’s home. But not
infrequently does a hole in the red brown tufa, with a
hearth on which the fire is seldom extinguished, do duty
in place of a hut. Life, and the conditions of living, here

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