Soci is now a growing centre of industry, and boasts of several factories. The high chimney of one of these figures is the attractive feature on the local picture post card. The thought often arises in these days at what a terrible cost to itself mankind is securing greater cheapness in goods--raising the standard of comfort, as economists put it; the thought was brought home in this outlying district. For the men and women we met in other parts of the district were robust in health and decently, if poorly, clad; the children were chubby, well-fed and full of buoyancy. But in places like Soci a blight seemed to have fallen on mankind. Men and women, girls and boys, all had the same look of mixed listlessness and craving, and the children were pale and neglected. No doubt here, as elsewhere, the people who flocked to the factories were impatient of the restraints and the penury of home; they escaped from the toil of home, but they did so at the cost of the home’s regularity of habit. Stranded in a strange place, bound by no responsibilities but those they chose to recognise, these men and women soon fell into irregular ways and formed illicit connections, with a consequent loss of physique to themselves and a deterioration of the race in a couple of generations.
Beyond Soci the mountains began to draw closer together. The road followed the river Archiano, which flowed in a narrower bed and assumed the character of a torrent. Only the land that was near the river was brought under cultivation. The slopes above were covered with a thin scrub of stunted oaks bearing only the sere foliage of last year’s growth. These mountains were chiefly of a brown mud-rock that had crumbled away along the water-courses, or else, undermined by them, had fallen in masses of soft earth, forming the gentler slopes. Side-valleys opened and closed as we passed onwards. The characteristics of the plain were disappearing more and more. We were entering the region of the Apennines.
At one point of the road we were doubtful if we should leave the valley, and seeing a man under a hay-stack munching bread and cheese we consulted him. But his look was interested, and he was so positive that the diverging path not being ours, we should never reach Camaldoli unless we consented to his guidance, that we became equally positive the map should be our only guide. We cut short further parleying by saying that we could but return if we missed the way altogether. Of this there was no chance. A short distance further and we sighted Serravalle, towering high on a steep eminence that fronted all quarters. On one side it commanded the bend in the road that led onwards across the Apennines into Romagna; on the other it stood well above a dip in the hills, and overlooked the side-valley down which the Fosso of Camaldoli flowed to join the Archiano. The mountain streams throughout the Casentino are spoken of as _fossi_, though not generally so designated on the map--a peculiar use of the word which suggests affinity to the northern _fos_ rather than to the Latin _fossa_. In sight of Serravalle we sat for a while and feasted on our usual lunch of bread, eggs and wine. After that we followed the stream for a time, and then, parting company with it, we began the ascent up the steep winding slope.