File:The panorama of nations - comprising the characteristics of courage, perseverance, enterprise, cunning, shrewdness, vivacity, ingenuity, contempt of danger and of death exhibited by people of the (14577437358).jpg

Identifier: panoramaofnation00fros (find matches)
Title: The panorama of nations : comprising the characteristics of courage, perseverance, enterprise, cunning, shrewdness, vivacity, ingenuity, contempt of danger and of death exhibited by people of the principal nations of the world, as illustrated in narratives of peril and adventure
Year: 1852 (1850s)
Authors: Frost, John, 1800-1859
Subjects: Adventure and adventurers
Publisher: Auburn, N.Y. : Beardsley
Contributing Library: University of California Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ck of the parish ofBedonia. The mountaineers of the upper districts of the Val di Taro, nomatter what may otherwise be the condition of Italy—are an in-dependent race. They are the same stubborn people against whomthe rage of the victorious Prench armies, under the guidance ofthe bloody Junot, had for many years to struggle with dubioussuccess; and although brought to allegiance after the Restoration,they are still virtually at war against all governments; and gend-armes, gangers, or excisemen, seldom venture with impunity with-in the stronghold of their mountain fastnesses. Too poor for tax-ation, too testy and stubborn for military service, the governmentof Parma would hardly deem it worth while to interfere with themin any manner, and would gladly leave them to the rule of theirpriests, and their traditional, clan-like, social compact, were itnot for the alarming extent to which they carry on their contra-band trade. Placed on the confine between the Tuscan; Sardinian, Mode-(152)
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JUKOT. THE LAST OF THE CONTRABANDIERI. 155 ncse, Parmesan, and Lucchcsc states, every higlilander of thatdistrict is at heart a smuggler. Naturally a people of the mostpeaceable disposition, frank, patriarchal, hospitable, as the Arabsof the desert, they arc only induced to take arms for the vindica-tion of what they consider their inalienable right of free trade.The Italian governments have, in their improvidence, laid theheaviest duties on salt, tobacco, gunpowder, and other articles ofthe same description, and raised toll-gates and custom-offices, atevery corner of their Lilliputian states. To evade the exactions,and to baffle the vigilance of the officers, to convey the forbiddenarticles from one state to another, to counteract the mean spiritof monopoly on the part of the governments, and establish a kindof unlawful Zollverein throughout the country, is the main occu-pation, the dearest object, the pride of the Val-tarese. Whoeverdefrauds the revenue by clandestine smufrjrlino; i

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