622
the white silk is regarded as especially valuable; and great care is taken by the richcultivators and the proprietors of mills, to encourage their being separately and vigilantlyreared, and brought to the highest perfection. The silk, as it comes from the insect, isof a pure and glossy whiteness. The climate of Grenoa appears particularly favourable tothe cultivation of silk ; and to the great attention which is bestowed on the cultivationand manufacture, Genoa has owed the superiority of her beautiful fabrics.
The hills which inclose the valley of the Polcevera are rich in marbles. One kind,greatly resembling the vend antique, is much esteemed, and is worked at Genoa intoornaments of various forms. In the villages an extensive manufacture is carried on ofmacearoni and vermicelli of every kind and shade. One of the fine ladies of England—asister, perhaps, of the one who was filled with surprise at the sight of a whole cucumber,as she said she thought it always grew in slices —asked a gentleman in Paris, who hadjust arrived from Italy , “ On what sort of a tree macearoni grew.” Our readers know itis made of wheaten flour ; hut with the process of manufacture they may not beequally acquainted.
The fact is, that the conversion of the flour—which is somewhat more coarsely groundthan that which is intended for bread—into the long, round strings, called macearoni, iseffected by a very simple process. With the addition of water alone, the flour is workedup into paste, and this is kneaded, for a length of time, by a heavy, loaded block of wood,which beats into the trough where the paste is deposited. This block or piston isattached to a beam acting as a lever, whose fulcrum is near to the block, while theother extremity of the beam is some eight or ten feet from the fulcrum. One or moreboys seat themselves astride at the further end of this beam, and descending with theirown weight, and springing up by putting their feet to the ground, give the requisitereciprocating motion to the lever. They thus play at see-saw with the block at theshorter end of the lever; and the effect produced on the eye of a stranger by a largemanufactory, where several of these machines, and a number of sturdy fellows, nearlynaked, and all bobbing up and down, are at work, has something in it exceedingly ludicrous.
When the paste has been sufficiently kneaded, it is forced, by simple pressure, througha number of circular tubes, the sizes of which determine the name to be given to thesubstance. That of superior diameter is macearoni, the smaller is vermicelli, and thereis a size still smaller, called fedelini.
The macearoni is hollow throughout, and many persons have been puzzled fo knowhow it is forced into these long tubes. Nothing is more simple. Over each of thelarger tubes meant for macearoni, a small copper bridge is erected, which is sufficientlyelevated to permit the paste to pass under it into the tube; from this bridge depends acopper wire which goes right through the tube, and of course leaves the paste tubular.There are some minor distinctions in the preparation of these articles which it would betedious to enumerate ; but the material and the process are the same in all. When thepaste has been forced through the tubes, like wire through a wire-drawer’s plate, aworkman takes up the macearoni or vermicelli, and lays it across a line to dry. Fromthe long kneading it has received, the substance is very consistent, and dries in unbrokenstrings that are two or three yards in length.
The Genoese mix saffron with their paste, which gives it a yellow colour; but thebest is manufactured on the coast of the Bay of Naples , about La Torre del Greco andLa Torre dell’ Annunziata, two towns which the traveller will pass if he visits the ruinsof Pompeii and Ihestum. Here the macearoni works appear in the fullest activity.Their productions command higher prices than any macearoni or vermicelli manufac-tured in other places, and they are exported in very considerable quantities. TheNeapolitans, proud of the only manufacture in which they excel, treat with greatcontempt the similar productions of all the rest of Italy ;