The truth is that, as far as my personal experience goes, I was never treated more kindly in my whole life than I was the day when, coming as a stranger, without an introduction of any kind, I ventured to visit the region which has the reputation of being the most wicked, and is certainly the most unfortunate, in Europe. I mean the region around and north of Girgenti, which is the seat at once of the sulphur mines and the Mafia.
If any one had told me before I went to Sicily that I would be willing to intrust my life to Sicilians away down in the darkness of a sulphur mine, I should have believed that such a person had lost his mind. I had read and heard so much of murders of the Mafia in Sicily, that for a long time I had had a horror of the name of Sicilians; but when I came in contact with them, before I knew it, I found myself trusting them absolutely to such an extent that I willingly followed them into the bowels of the earth; into a hot, narrow, dark sulphur mine where, without a moment's warning, they might have demanded my life or held me, if they cared to, for a ransom. Nothing of this kind occurred; on the other hand, I repeat, every Sicilian with whom I came in contact in the sulphur mine treated me in the most kindly manner, and I came away from their country having the highest respect for them.
I did not meet, while I was there, a single person, from the superintendent to the lowest labourer at the mines, who did not seem, not only willing, but even anxious, to assist me to see and learn everything I wanted to know. What is more, Campofranco was the only place in Europe where I met men who refused to accept money for a service rendered me.
It was a cold, cloudy, windy, rainy day when the little coasting vessel that was to take us across the Adriatic drew out from the gray and misty harbour of the ancient city of Ancona and started in the direction of Fiume, the single point at which the Kingdom of Hungary touches the sea. I had read of the hardships of the early immigrants, and I heard once an old coloured man, who had been carried to America as a slave, tell of the long journey of himself and some fifty others, all crowded together in a little sailing vessel. It was not, however, until this trip of a few hours on the Adriatic in a dirty, ill-smelling little vessel that I began to understand, although I had crossed the ocean several times, how uncomfortable a sea voyage might be.