The people are mostly shepherds in the higher regions, where there are no vines, and when opportunity offers they will waylay the unwary traveller and rob him, and even murder him, without thinking very much about it.

In the old days the boundary between the Papal States and the kingdom of Naples ran through these mountains, and the contrabbandieri--the smugglers of all sorts of wares--used to cross from one dominion to the other by circuitous paths and steep ways of which only a few had knowledge.

The better known of these passes were defended by soldiers and police, but there have been bloody fights fought, within a few years, between the law and its breakers.

Foreigners never penetrate into the recesses of these hills, and even the English guide-books, which are said to contain an account of everything that the Buon Dio ever made, compiled from notes taken at the time of the creation, make no mention of places which surpass in beauty all the rest of Italy put together.
No railroad or other modern innovation penetrates into those Arcadian regions, where the goatherd plays upon his pipe all the day long, the picture of peace and innocence, or prowls in the passes with a murderous long gun, if there are foreigners in the air.

The women toil at carrying their scant supply of drinking-water from great distances during a part of the day, and in the evening they spin industriously by their firesides or upon their doorsteps, as the season will have it.