Note 1330 — Chapter XVI · —Influences Of A Mountain Environment

This seasonal emigration often assumes the form of peddling, in order to dispose of small home-made wares. From the Basilicata and Modena Apennines the young men follow the pedler's trade, but the Basilicata village of Viggiano furnishes Italy with many wandering musicians.1330 The Kabyles of the Atlas Mountains go out in parties of two or three in the fall, and hawk every kind of goods, bringing back from their journey quantities of wool for home weaving.1331 The emigration may last for several years, but finally the love of home generally calls the mountaineer back to his rugged hills. The Galicians of the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain leave their poor country for a time for the richer provinces of Portugal and Spain, where they become porters, water-carriers and scavengers, and are known as boorish, but industrious and honest. The women from the neighboring mountain province of Asturias are the professional wet-nurses of Spain. They are to be seen in every aristocratic household of Madrid, but return to the mountains with their savings when their period of service ends.1332 In mountainous Basutoland, the Kaffir Switzerland of South Africa, arable land and pastures are utilized as completely as local methods of husbandry permit; and yet the native Kaffirs go in large numbers—28,000 out of a total population of 220,000 in 1895—to work in the mines of Kimberley and the Witwatersrand. They also return in time with their savings.1333 Similarly the Battaks of the rugged mountain-rimmed plateau of western Sumatra emigrate in increasing numbers to the lowlands, and hire themselves out for a term of years on the Dutch plantations.1334