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un poco amalati, e il motive e state la salita al S Gotardo che
Tanne telta trope in freta e anno sudate un momentine. E per
censeguenza e scopiata una ponte. Noi I'abbiamo lasciati ancor
nelP ette ma sembrava che ceminciava guarire/*
Letters such as this, which also advised on the whereabouts of friends' relatives,
estabUshed important networks for the emigrants, opening channels of communication
which would continue m AustraUa. The famiUes remaining in Europe were thus made
aware of the demands of the joumey, learning of the contributions made by injury and
iUness.
The traveUers encountered many other problems during their travels overland,
one of the most alarming being their inability to communicate in their own language
with the local populations. Feeling alienated and alone, many stmggled to make
themselves understood. Raimondo Pedroia, arriving in Liverpool from Ticino in 1856,
explained:
n nostre viaggio non e state tuttalmente felice perche non avendo
ne lingua tedesca, ne francese, ne inglese, da parlare abiamo
allungate la strada piii de 80 ere non selamente la lontananza della
strada ma anche del denare abbiame spese di piu/^
It is less likely that the Italian speakers also had the same difficulty communicating
with the other ItaUan and Ticinese travellers they met. Italians of that era spoke the
dialect which was closely tied to their village of birth, and another which related to the
region in which they lived. Since the area from which the Italian speakers had
emigrated had been politically and administratively tied to the Dukedom of Milan until
the end of the 1400s, the people shared a common Lombard dialect.^' They also spoke
a form of Italian which had been in emergence since the thirteenth century and was
consolidated in the sixteenth century. Based on the Tuscan dialect, its use had been
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