that the earth provides everything without
working it. When you want rice or tobacco you have to ask it from those
who cultivate it".

The old man quickly retorted:

"And what does that matter? We have the right of demand because both are
grown upon our soil. By cutting down our beautiful forest for
plantations we are deprived of game and fruit; by drying up our ponds we
have no fish to eat; by cultivating our land we are being continually
driven farther towards the mountains, in search of that food which
satisfied our fathers, but the stranger who comes amongst us beats the
path that we have traced with our feet. Is it not just then that we
should have some recompense, that certain of our needs should be
considered?".

[Illustration: In quest of animal food.

_p._ 91.]

"Povera e nuda vai, filosofia",[6] I muttered to myself, admiring that
old man, ignorant and bare, who in the rough, broken phrases of his poor
language solved with the greatest simplicity questions of civil rights
which a University professor would have found complicated and even
difficult. I continued however:

"But then if nobody came to you, treading your paths; if nobody
cultivated some strips of your forest, how would you obtain calico, and
tobacco and rice?".

With a shake of his head my humble host hastened to answer:

"Cannot man live without these trifles? Does not the forest supply us
with flesh, fish, and fowl? Does it not produce, for our use, roots,
bulbs, truffles, mushrooms, edible leaves and exquisite fruit? Do not
its trees provide us with shelter and their bark with a covering for our
bodies, when it is necessary? What more could one desire?".

I was nonplused! But noticing that my new friend was in the vein to
chat, a fact which I inwardly attributed to the effects of that same
tobacco, whose necessity he had just denied, but which he was smoking
with evident pleasure, I turned the conversation by asking why his
people were not be found in other parts of the Peninsula?

"We love our forest and our liberty too well ever to leave these
confines of our own accord" he replied placidly and in tones of
conviction, "and when, as sometimes happened in the past, our people
were forced to follow and serve their conquerors they brought little or
no profit to their masters because if they found a chance of escaping
back to their kindred they did so, and if not, in a short time they died
of broken hearts. As for our children, we wou