y
wealthy Signore has arrived in Amalfi will run like wild-fire through the
whole place, and your life in consequence will become an absolute burden
for the remainder of your sojourn in this spot. Refuse, and the wretches
who have hitherto been wheedling and cringing at your heels, will at once
grow insolent and threatening, especially in the case of unprotected
ladies. It is in fact a choice of two evils, and the only remedy that we
ourselves can suggest is for the persecuted traveller to select a good
stout larrikin and pay him freely to keep at arm's length his detestable
brothers and sisters in professional beggary. But the uninitiated usually
endure these odious importunities for a certain length of time, and then,
exasperated by the unchecked mendicancy of the place, at last fly
precipitately from this beautiful shore, to seek comparative peace and
freedom elsewhere. For it is useless to argue; it is foolish, even
dangerous to grow angry. "Why should we give to you?" we asked one day in
desperation of a particularly persistent woman. "Because," was the
unabashed and impudent but unanswerable reply, "you have much, and I have
nothing!" Driven by these human pests from the sunlit strand, we make our
way through the busy piazza, where peasant women with piles of fruit and
vegetables make a glowing mass of colour around the central fountain below
St Andrew's statue, and proceed towards the Valley of the Mills. A
different phase of Amalfitan life now greets us, for here are to be found
the hard-working bees of this human hive, and it must be confessed their
ways make an agreeable change from the habits of the pestering drones that
infest the beach and the neighbourhood of the hotels. The whole of the
steep rocky gorge of that tiny torrent the Canneto is full of mills, each
emitting a whirring sound which mingles with the continual plash of the
water as it descends in miniature cascades the full length of the ravine,
providing in its headlong course towards the sea the motive power required
to turn all this quantity of machinery. Bridges span the Canneto at
several points, whilst either bank is occupied by tiny factories of paper
or soap, and by winding stone stair-ways that lead upward to terraces
contrived to catch the sunshine for the purpose of drying the goods. The
whole valley, with its strong contrasting effects of sun and shade and its
varied atmosphere of intense heat and of chilly dampness, is full of
seething p