They are almost always handsome fellows, well grown, and striking
specimens of robust and manly vigor, probably by virtue of the lives
they lead, and of the similar lives the race from which they spring
have led before them; partly also, no doubt, from the fact that should
any son be born to a buttero who should not be thus happily endowed,
he could not think of following the ancestral occupation, but would
have to be weeded out from the race and seek his place in the towns,
where he would not become the father of degenerate _butteri_.
My friend Nanni Silvani was all that I have described the buttero to
be. He was indeed a very perfect specimen of his class; and if the
reader will allow me to tell him how I first came to be acquainted
with Nanni, the relation of the circumstances will at the same time
show him one of the most remarkable phases of the buttero's life, and
one of the most curiously characteristic scenes of Italian--and
especially Roman--life which it falls to the lot of foreign visitors
to witness.
It will be readily understood that the cattle, whether horned beasts
or horses, which wander from pasture to pasture over the vast extent
of the Campagna are liable to stray occasionally, and perhaps to
become mingled with the herds belonging to another proprietor.
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