after the present turmoil is over. Our descendants a hundred years
hence will not think of the incessant noise as though of
cannonading with which we were so familiar. From nowhere was it
more striking than from Calonico, the Monte Piottino having no
sooner become silent than the Biaschina would open fire, and
sometimes both would be firing at once. Posterity may care to know
that another and less agreeable feature of the present time was the
quantity of stones that would come flying about in places which one
would have thought were out of range. All along the road, for
example, between Giornico and Lavorgo, there was incessant blasting
going on, and it was surprising to see the height to which stones
were sometimes carried. The dwellers in houses near the blasting
would cover their roofs with boughs and leaves to soften the fall
of the stones. A few people were hurt, but much less damage was
done than might have been expected. I may mention for the benefit
of English readers that the tunnels through Monte Piottino and the
Biaschina are marvels of engineering skill, being both of them
spiral; the road describes a complete circle, and descends rapidly
all the while, so that the point of egress as one goes from Airolo
towards Faido is at a much lower level than that of ingress.

If an accident does happen, they call it a disgrazia, thus
confirming the soundness of a philosophy which I put forward in an
earlier work. Every misfortune they hold (and quite rightly) to be
a disgrace to the person who suffers it; "Son disgraziato" is the
Italian for "I have been unfortunate." I was once going to give a
penny to a poor woman by the roadside, when two other women stopped
me. "Non merita," they said; "She is no deserving object for
charity"--the fact being that she was an idiot. Nevertheless they
were very kind to her.