Some storm-battered larches stood on the steepest edge of a naked ravine, through which the Restonica foamed and tumbled from block to block. All around, nothing but the dreariest cliffs; and one grand glimpse into the mist-filled valley out of which I had ascended. My eye sought long for the huts towards which the guide was pointing. At length I detected them among the rocks, and advancing, I soon had before me this most singular of pastoral communities. It consisted of four dwellings, erected in the most primitive manner conceivable, probably with less architectural skill than the termites or the beavers expend on their houses. Each of these huts consists of four stone walls, built without mortar. They are about three feet in height, and support a sloping roof of sooty stems of trees and boards, on which heavy stones are laid to keep them in their places. An aperture in the front wall serves as door and principal chimney; but the smoke issues through the roof and the walls wherever it finds a chink. An enclosure of stones surrounds a narrow space before the hut, and within this space, dishes of various kinds stand; also, in one corner of it rises the _palo_—a rude stake with projecting pegs, on which hang pots and kettles, clothes, and strips of goat's flesh. Some shaggy dogs sprang out as I rode up, and forthwith the men, women, and children crept from their huts, and curiously eyed the stranger. They looked picturesque enough in the midst of the stony waste; the _pelone_, their shaggy, brown mantle flung about them, the red _baretto_ on their heads, and their bronzed features looking out from their dark bushy beards. I called to them: "Friends, bestow your hospitality on a stranger who has come over the sea to visit the herdsmen of Co di Mozzo!" In friendly tones they returned: "Evviva!" and "Benvenuto!" "Come into my hut," said one, "and dry yourself at the fire; it is warm in there." I immediately twisted myself through the door, curious to see the interior of such a habitation. I found myself in a dark chamber, about fourteen feet in length and ten in breadth—wholly without furniture, not a stool, not a table, nothing but the black naked ground, the black, naked stone walls, and such a smoke of pine-wood as, I thought, it must be impossible to live in. Close by the wall a huge log was burning, and a kettle hung above it.