Early the next morning, as my train was approaching Naples, my attention was attracted by the large number of women I saw at work in the fields. It was not merely the number of women but the heavy wrought-iron hoes, of a crude and primitive manufacture, with which these women worked that aroused my interest. These hoes were much like the heavy tools I had seen the slaves use on the plantations before the Civil War. With these heavy instruments some of the women seemed to be hacking the soil, apparently preparing it for cultivation; others were merely leaning wearily upon their tools, as if they were over-tired with the exertion. This seemed quite possible to me, because the Italian women are slighter and not as robust as the women I had seen at work in the fields in Austria. I inquired why it was that I saw so many women in the fields in this part of the country, for I had understood that Italian women, as a rule, did not go so frequently into field work as the women do in Austria and Hungary. I learned that it was because so many of the men who formerly did this work had emigrated to America. As a matter of fact, three fourths of the emigration from Italy to America comes from Sicily and the other southern provinces. There are villages in lower Italy which have been practically deserted. There are others in which no one but women and old men are left behind, and the whole population is more than half supported by the earnings of Italian labourers in America. There are cities within twenty miles of Naples which have lost within ten years two thirds of their inhabitants. In fact, there is one little village not far from the city of which it is said that the entire male population is in America. Ten days later, coming north from Sicily, I passed through the farming country south of Naples, from which large numbers of emigrants go every year to the United States. It is a sad and desolate region. Earthquakes, malaria, antiquated methods of farming, and the general neglect of the agricultural population have all contributed to the miseries of the people. The land itself--at least such portion of it as I saw--looks old, wornout, and decrepit; and the general air of desolation is emphasized when, as happened in my case, one comes suddenly, in the midst of the desolate landscape, upon some magnificent and lonely ruin representing the ancient civilization that flourished here two thousand years ago.