That Hat Alone Will Have Alarmed The Peasantry
Who To This Day And Hour Wear Nothing But Felt On Their Heads.
And note
the predominance of the colour white in his attire; it was popular, at
that period, with English travellers.
Such men, however, were unknown in
most of the regions which Ramage explored. The colour must have inspired
feelings akin to awe in the minds of the natives, for white is their
bete noire. They have a rooted aversion to it and never employ it in
their clothing, because it suggests to their fancy the idea of
bloodlessness - of anaemia and death. If you want to make one of them ill
over his dinner, wear a white waistcoat.
Accordingly, it is not surprising that he sometimes finds himself "an
object of curiosity." An English Vice-Consul, at one place, was "quite
alarmed at my appearance." Elsewhere he meets a band of peasant-women
who "took fright at my appearance and scampered off in the utmost
confusion." And what happened at Taranto? By the time of his arrival in
that town his clothes were already in such a state that "they would
scarcely fit an Irish beggar." Umbrella in hand - he is careful to
apprise us of this detail - and soaked moreover from head to foot after
an immersion in the river Tara, he entered the public square, which was
full of inhabitants, and soon found himself the centre of a large crowd.
Looking, he says, like a drowned rat, his appearance caused "great
amazement."
"What is the matter?
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