t, however, if he shoots a deer, or a
buffalo, or wild boar, must pay the keeper at a certain fixed price, not
much above its price in the market, which a sportsman would hardly think
above its worth for game of his own killing. The town of Salerno is a
beautiful seaport town, and it is, as it were, wrapt in an Italian cloak
hanging round the limbs, or, to speak common sense, the new streets
which they are rebuilding. We made no stop at Salerno, but continued to
traverse the great plain of that name, within sight of the sea, which is
chiefly pastured by that queer-looking brute, the buffalo, concerning
which they have a notion that it returns its value sooner, and with less
expense of feeding, than any other animal.

At length we came to two streams which join their forces, and would seem
to flow across the plain to the bottom of the hills. One, however, flows
so flat as almost scarcely to move, and sinking into a kind of stagnant
pool is swallowed up by the earth, without proceeding any further until,
after remaining buried for two or three [miles?] underground, it again
bursts forth to the light, and resumes its course. When we crossed this
stream by a bridge, which they are now repairing, we entered a spacious
plain, very like that which we had [left] and displaying a similar rough
and savage cultivation. Here savage herds were under the guardianship of
shepherds as wild as they were themselves, clothed in a species of
sheepskins, and carrying a sharp spear with which they herd and
sometimes kill their buffaloes. Their farmhouses are in very poor order,
and with every mark of poverty, and they have the character of being
moved to dishonesty by anything like opportunity; of this there was a
fatal instance, but so well avenged that it is not like to be repeated
till it has long faded out of memory. The story, I am assured, happened
exactly as follows:--A certain Mr. Hunt, lately married to a lady of his
own age, and, seeming to have had what is too often the Englishman's
characteristic of more money than wit, arrived at Naples a year or two
ago _en famille_, and desirous of seeing all the sights in the vicinity
of this celebrated place. Among others Paestum was not forgot. At one of
the poor farmhouses where they stopped, the inhabitant set her eyes on
a toilet apparatus which was composed of silver and had the appearance
of great value. The woman who spread this report addressed herself to a
youth who had been [under]