I answered, "is one of the most peculiar and
characteristic products of that very peculiar region, the _Agro
Romano_."

The conditions under which the district around Rome is cultivated--or
rather possessed and left uncultivated--are entirely _sui
generis_--quite unlike anything else in the world. The vast undulating
plain called the Campagna is divided among very few proprietors in
comparison to its extent, who hold immense estates, which are more
profitable than the appearance of the country, smitten to all seeming
with a curse of desolation, would lead a stranger to suppose. These
huge properties are held mainly by the great Roman papal families and
by monastic corporations whose monasteries are within the city. In
either case the property is practically inalienable, and has been
passed from father to son for generations, or held by an undying
religious corporation in unchanging sameness for many generations.
Cultivation in the proper sense of the word is out of the question in
this region: the prevalence of the deadly malaria renders it
impossible. But the vast extent of the plain is wandered over by large
herds of half-wild cattle, in great part buffaloes, the produce of
which is turned to profit in large dairy and cheese-making
establishments, and by large droves of horses, from which a very
useful breed of animals is raised. The superintendence and care of
these is the work of the buttero. Large flocks of sheep and goats
also are fed upon the herbage of the Campagna. But the shepherds who
tend them are quite a different race of men from the buttero, and are
deemed, especially by himself, to hold a far inferior position in the
social scale. And, as is ever the case, social prejudice justifies
itself by producing the phenomenon it has declared to exist. The
shepherd of the Campagna, having long been deemed the very lowest of
the low, has become such in reality. Clad in the dried but untanned
skin of one of his flock, he has almost the appearance of a savage,
and, unless common fame belies him, he is the savage he looks. The
buttero looks down upon him from a very pinnacle of social elevation
in the eyes of every inhabitant of the towns and villages around Rome,
especially in those of the youthful female population. While the poor
shepherd, shaggy as his sheep, wild-looking as his goats, and savage
as his dogs, squalid, fever-stricken and yellow, spending long weeks
and even months in solitude amid the desolation o