beginning to settle down to a degree that threatened monotony; and with
the termination of the winter gaieties at Naples and the close of the San
Carlo, I seriously bethought me of accepting the offer of a naval friend
who was about to engage in blockade-running, and offered to land me in
the Confederate States, when a recrudescence of activity on the part of
the brigand bands in Calabria induced me to turn my attention in that
direction. The first question I had to consider was, whether I should
enjoy myself most by joining the brigands, or the troops which were
engaged in suppressing them. As the former aspired to a political
character, and called themselves patriotic bands fighting for their
Church, their country, and their King--the refugee monarch of Naples--one
could espouse their cause without exactly laying one's self open to the
charge of being a bandit; but it was notorious in point of fact that the
bands cared for neither the Pope nor the exiled King nor their annexed
country, but committed the most abominable atrocities in the names of all
the three, for the simple purpose of filling their pockets. I foresaw
not only extreme difficulty in being accepted as a member of the
fraternity, more especially as I had hitherto been identified with the
Garibaldians; but also the probability of finding myself compromised by
acts from which my conscience would revolt, and for which my life would
in all likelihood pay the forfeit. On the other hand, I could think of
no friend among the officers of the Bersaglieri and cavalry regiments,
then engaged in brigand-hunting in the Capitanata and Basilicata, to whom
I could apply for an invitation to join them.

Under these circumstances, I determined to trust to the chapter of
accidents; and armed with a knapsack, a sketch-book, and an air-gun, took
my seat one morning in the Foggia diligence, with the vague idea of
getting as near the scene of operations as possible, and seeing what
would turn up. The air-gun was not so much a weapon of offence or