There seems an idle pause in every thing
about this place. The port is without a sail, excepting that once in a
while a solitary felucca may be seen, disgorging its holy cargo of
baccala, the meagre provision for the Quaresima or Lent. The naked
watch towers, rising here and there along the coast, speak of pirates
and corsairs which hover about these shores: while the low huts, as
stations for soldiers, which dot the distant road, as it winds through
an olive grove, intimate that in the ascent there is danger for the
traveller and facility for the bandit.
Indeed, it is between this town and Fondi that the road to Naples is
Mostly infested by banditti. It winds among rocky and solitary places,
where the robbers are enabled to see the traveller from a distance from
the brows of hills or impending precipices, and to lie in wait for him,
at the lonely and difficult passes.
At the time that the estafette made this sudden appearance, almost in
_cuerpo_, the audacity of the robbers had risen to an unparalleled
height. They had their spies and emissaries in every town, village, and
osteria, to give them notice of the quality and movements of
travellers. They did not scruple to send messages into the country
towns and villas, demanding certain sums of money, or articles of dress
and luxury; with menaces of vengeance in case of refusal. They had
plundered carriages; carried people of rank and fortune into the
mountains and obliged them to write for heavy ransoms; and had
committed outrages on females who had fallen in their power.
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