bout crossing the Taro to
Fornovo--my first point--to my astonishment they shook their heads.
The Taro was impassable.

Why could it not be crossed? My very broken language made it difficult
for me to understand. They talked _oframi,_ which I thought meant
oars; but _rami,_ had I known it, meant the separate branches or
streams whereby these torrential rivers of Italy flow through their
arid beds.

I drew a boat and asked if one could not cross in that (for I was a
northerner, and my idea of a river was a river with banks and water in
between), but they laughed and said 'No.' Then I made the motion of
swimming. They said it was impossible, and one man hung his head to
indicate drowning. It was serious. They said to-morrow, or rather next
day, one might do it.

Finally, a boy that stood by said he remembered a man who knew the
river better than any one, and he, if any one could, would get me
across. So I took the boy with me up the road, and as we went I saw,
parallel to the road, a wide plain of dazzling rocks and sand, and
beyond it, shining and silhouetted like an Arab village, the group of
houses that was Fornovo. This plain was their sort of river in these
hills. The boy said that sometimes it was full and a mile wide,
sometimes it dwindled into dirty pools. Now, as I looked, a few thin
streams seemed to wind through it, and I could not understand the
danger.

After a mile or two we came to a spot in the road where a patch of
brushwood only separated us from the river-bed. Here the boy bade me
wait, and asked a group of peasants whether the guide was in; they
said they thought so, and some went up into the hillside with the boy
to fetch him, others remained with me, looking at the river-bed and at
Fornovo beyond, shaking their heads, and saying it had not been done
for days. But I did not understand whether the rain-freshet had passed
and was draining away, or whether it had not yet come down from
beyond, and I waited for the guide.

They brought him at last down from his hut among the hills. He came
with great strides, a kindly-looking man, extremely tall and thin, and
with very pale eyes. He smiled. They pointed me out to him, and we
struck the bargain by holding up three fingers each for three lira,
and nodding. Then he grasped his long staff and I mine, we bade
farewell to the party, and together we went in silence through thick
brushwood down towards the broad river-bed. The stones of it glared
like th