Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 12.djvu/422

396 repugnant to good taste that one would suppose they must have been placed there by the prince himself.

After passing Mon Reale, we left behind us the beautiful road, and got into the rugged mountain country. Here some rocks appeared on the crown of the road, which, judging from their gravity and metallic incrustations, I took to be ironstone. Every level spot is cultivated, and is more or less prolific. The limestone in these parts had a reddish hue, and all the pulverised earth is of the same colour. This red argillaceous and calcareous earth extends over a great space. The subsoil is hard, no sand underneath; but it produces excellent wheat. We noticed old, very strong, but stumpy olive-trees.

Under the shelter of an airy room, which has been built as an addition to the wretched inn, we refreshed ourselves with a temperate luncheon. Dogs eagerly gobbled up the skins of our sausages, but a beggar-boy drove them off. He was feasting with a wonderful appetite on the parings of the apples we were eating, when he in his turn was driven away by an old beggar. Want of work is here felt everywhere. In a ragged toga, the old beggar was glad to get a job as house-servant or waiter. Thus I had formerly observed that whenever a landlord was asked for anything which he had not at the moment in the house, he would send a beggar to the shop for it.

However, we are pretty well provided against all such sorry attendance: for our vetturino is an excellent fellow; he is ready as ostler, cicerone, guard, courier, cook, and everything.

On the higher hills you find everywhere the olive, the caruba, and the ash. Their system of farming is also spread over three years,—beans, corn, fallow,—in which mode of culture the people say the dung does more marvels than all the saints. The grape-stock is kept down very low.