What the Traveller Saw (19 page)

The main mast with all square sail set. The two fore-and-aft staysails are the main topmast and topgallant staysail. In full sail.
Moshulu
was designed to carry 45,000 square feet of canvas.

A big sea coming aboard and one of the watch on deck jumps for a lifeline.

A hearse on the premises of Bellomuno Undertakers (
Impresari di pompe funebri
) on the Rampo del Campo in Napoli, which is strategically sited on the way to the principal Neapolitan cemeteries.

The
vendemmia
– grape harvest – near Fosdinovo.

The Riva degli Schiavoni with, in the background, San Giorgio Maggiore.

Whenever I come back to this utterly enslaving, beautiful. stinking, dying city, I do so with the hope that this time it will yield up its secrets to me. But when the time comes for me to leave, I realize that even if I wanted to stay in Venice for the rest of my life this could never be.

In
Albertine Disparue
Proust writes of entering a network of
calli
, the little alleyways of the city, and coming by chance upon a great open
campo
in the moonlight and failing to find it again the next morning, wondering whether it was part of a dream or a place like one of those oriental palaces ‘to which mysterious agents convey by night a person who, taken home again before daybreak, can never again find his way back to the magic dwelling which he ends by supposing that he visited only in a dream’.

Farmers near Fosdinovo, northern Tuscany. The one on the right is known as ‘Pilota’ because, in the Second World War, as a member of the Alpini, he was brought back from the Russian front in an aeroplane.

A shepherd on his way down the Panjshir Valley to Kabul with a herd of fat-tailed sheep.

On our way down this valley, which has since become a battleground, we met the famous explorer Wilfred Thesiger, with whom we spent the night. The next day, together with our little party, exultant in spite of our ills at having more or less done whatever we had set out to do in Nuristan, in spite of having failed to climb one of its larger mountains, we marched forty miles down through its gorges to reach Jangalak, the hamlet from which we had set off. Then, after a day or two spent licking our wounds at the British Embassy, and having our stomachs seen to, we went our different ways.

Red Square, Moscow. Early morning brush-up.

Curragh
at sea. Inisheer women in their best going-ashore clothes being rowed out to the steamer that will take them to Galway.

For fishing and transporting passengers and goods to and from the visiting steamer (except on Inishmore Island, the largest and most up-to-date, where the ship can tie up alongside ). the islanders use
curraghs
, as do many other communities on the west coast. These rowing boats are about nineteen feet long, and have square counters and bows with a pronounced turn-up to help them through the surf. They consist of a light framework of laths covered with tarred canvas. The oars arc tapered laths, almost bladeless, which fit over a single thole pin, enabling them to be le ft unshipped in the water while the crew is fishing. They are very handy but take a bit of getting used to, being what might be described as tender. They can carry phenomenal quantities of people and goods – up to twelve people (the crew is usually three) – and over a ton of potatoes if the weather is good. Sometimes they even carry tombstones. When not in use, the curraghs are left upside down on the shore above high water and look like shiny black monsters. Going to sea, the crews carry them down to the water upside down on their heads, a sight which could be mistaken for some strange, multi-legged creature dreamed up by Hieronymous Bosch. Nowadays, many
curraghs
are equipped with outboard motors.