ABSTRACT
Before leaving the Inner Sea this morning, we had stopped for a last day or two by some villages on its banks; villages every one alike, in which the same physical activity, and the same tranquillity of spirit, seemed to rule. There were little harbours encumbered with fishing junks, where one met the sharp smell of brine. There were little houses of fine and delicate craftsmanship, of ideal cleanliness, keeping the brightness of new wood. The population was alert and vigorous, singularly different from that of the towns, bronzed by the sea air, strongly and thickly built, with red blood in their cheeks. The men went naked like antique statues, and were often admirable, looking, with their stocky frames and excessive muscular development, like miniatures of the Farnese Hercules. To tell the truth the women lacked grace, despite their healthy hue and well ordered coils of hair; they were too solid, too stumpy, with great red hands. And innumerable little children were scattered about everywhere, choking the paths, playing on the sands, and squatting in rows on the edges of the junks like swarms of sparrows. It will not be long before 211this people is overcrowded on its islands, and it must, most fatefully, spill itself elsewhere.
