full as beehives; people are at all the open windows; garments hang
from the balconies and from poles thrust out; up every narrow, gloomy,
ascending street are crowds of struggling human shapes; and you see
how like herrings in a box are packed the over half a million people of
Naples. In front of the houses are the markets in the open air,--fish,
vegetables, carts of oranges; in the sun sit women spinning from
distaffs or weaving fishing-nets; and rows of children who were never
washed and never clothed but once, and whose garments have nearly
wasted away; beggars, fishermen in red caps, sailors, priests,
donkeys, fruit-venders, street-musicians, carriages, carts, two-wheeled
break-down vehicles,--the whole tangled in one wild roar and rush and
babel,--a shifting, varied panorama of color, rags,--a pandemonium such
as the world cannot show elsewhere, that is what one sees on the road
to Resina. The drivers all drive in the streets here as if they held
a commission from the devil, cracking their whips, shouting to their
horses, and dashing into the thickest tangle with entire recklessness.
They have one cry, used alike for getting more speed out of their horses
or for checking them, or in warning to the endangered crowds on foot. It
is an exclamatory grunt, which may be partially expressed by the
letters "a-e-ugh." Everybody shouts it, mule-driver, "coachee," or
cattle-driver; and even I, a passenger, fancied I could do it to
disagreeable perfection after a time. Out of this throng in the streets
I like to select the meek, patient, diminutive little donkeys, with
enormous panniers that almost hide them. One would have a woman seated
on top, with a child in one pannier and cabbages in the other; another,
with an immense stock of market-greens on his back, or big baskets of
oranges, or with a row of wine-casks and a man seated behind, adhering,
by some unknown law of adhesion, to the sloping tail. Then there was
the cart drawn by one diminutive donkey, or by an ox, or by an ox and
a donkey, or by a donkey and horse abreast, never by any possibility a
matched team. And, funniest of all, was the high, two-wheeled caleche,
with one seat, and top thrown back, with long thills and poor horse.
Upon this vehicle were piled, Heaven knows how, behind, before, on the
thills, and underneath the high seat, sometimes ten, and not seldom as
many as eighteen people, men, women, and children,--all in flaunting
rags, with a colored scarf h