Spartivento looks more wild and
savage than ever, but is not without a strange deadly beauty: the
hills covered with bushes of a metallic green with coppery patches
of soil in between; the valleys filled with dry salt mud and a
little stagnant water; where that very morning the deer had drunk,
where herons, curlews, and other fowl abound, and where, alas!
malaria is breeding with this rain. (No fear for those who do not
sleep on shore.) A little iron hut had been placed there since
1858; but the windows had been carried off, the door broken down,
the roof pierced all over. In it, we sat to make experiments; and
how it recalled Birkenhead! There was Thomson, there was my
testing board, the strings of gutta-percha; Harry P- even,
battering with the batteries; but where was my darling Annie?
Whilst I sat feet in sand, with Harry alone inside the hut -mats,
coats, and wood to darken the window - the others visited the
murderous old friar, who is of the order of Scaloppi, and for whom
I brought a letter from his superior, ordering him to pay us
attention; but he was away from home, gone to Cagliari in a boat
with the produce of the farm belonging to his convent.
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