wine; I ate and drank by the window, exulting in what I saw and all I
hoped to see.
Guide-books had informed me that the corriere (mail-diligence) from
Paola to Cosenza corresponded with the arrival of the Naples steamer,
and, after the combat on the beach, my first care was to inquire about
this. All and sundry made eager reply that the corriere had long
since gone; that it started, in fact, at 5 A.M., and that the only
possible mode of reaching Cosenza that day was to hire a vehicle.
Experience of Italian travel made me suspicious, but it afterwards
appeared that I had been told the truth. Clearly, if I wished to
proceed at once, I must open negotiations at my inn, and, after a
leisurely meal, I did so. Very soon a man presented himself who was
willing to drive me over the mountains—at a charge which I saw to be
absurd; the twinkle in his eye as he named the sum sufficiently
enlightened me. By the book it was no more than a journey of four
hours; my driver declared that it would take from seven to eight. After
a little discussion he accepted half the original demand, and went off
very cheerfully to put in his horses.
For an hour I rambled about the town’s one street, very picturesque and
rich in colour, with rushing fountains where women drew fair water in
jugs and jars of antique beauty. Whilst I was thus loitering in the
sunshine, two well-dressed men approached me, and with somewhat
excessive courtesy began conversation. They understood that I was about
to drive to Cosenza. A delightful day, and a magnificent country! They
too thought of journeying to Cosenza, and, in short, would I allow them
to share my carriage? Now this was annoying; I much preferred to be
alone with my thoughts; but it seemed ungracious to refuse. After a
glance at their smiling faces, I answered that whatever room remained
in the vehicle was at their service—on the natural understanding that
they shared the expense; and to this, with the best grace in the world,
they at once agreed. We took momentary leave of each other, with much
bowing and flourishing of hats, and the amusing thing was that I never
beheld those gentlemen again.
Fortunately—as the carriage proved to be a very small one, and the sun
was getting very hot; with two companions I should have had an
uncomfortable day. In front of the Leone a considerable number of
loafers had assembled to see me off, and of these some half-dozen were
persevering mendicants. It disappointed me that I saw no interesting
costume; all wore the common, colourless garb of our destroying age.
The only vivid memory of these people which remains with me is the
cadence of their speech. Whilst I was breakfasting, two women stood at
gossip on a near balcony, and their utterance was a curious
exaggeration of the Neapolitan accent; every sentence rose to a high
note, and fell away in a long curve of sound, sometimes a musical wail,
more often a mere whining. The protraction of the last word or two was
really astonishing; again and again I fancied that the speaker had
broken into song. I cannot say that the effect was altogether pleasant;
in the end such talk would tell severely on civilized nerves, but it
harmonized with the coloured houses, the luxuriant vegetation, the
strange odours, the romantic landscape.
In front of the vehicle were three little horses; behind it was hitched
an old shabby two-wheeled thing, which we were to leave somewhere for
repairs. With whip-cracking and vociferation, amid good-natured
farewells from the crowd, we started away. It was just ten o’clock.
At once the road began to climb, and nearly three hours were spent in
reaching the highest point of the mountain barrier. Incessantly
winding, often doubling upon itself, the road crept up the sides of
profound gorges, and skirted many a precipice; bridges innumerable
spanned the dry ravines which at another season are filled with furious
torrents. From the zone of orange and olive and cactus we passed that
of beech and oak, noble trees now shedding their rich-hued foliage on
bracken crisped and brown; here I noticed the feathery bowers of wild
clematis (“old man’s beard”), and many a spike of the great mullein,
strange to me because so familiar in English lanes. Through mists that
floated far below I looked over miles of shore, and outward to the
ever-rising limit of sea and sky. Very lovely were the effects of
light, the gradations of colour; from the blue-black abysses, where no
shape could be distinguished, to those violet hues upon the furrowed
heights which had a transparency, a softness, an indefiniteness, unlike
anything to be seen in northern landscape.
The driver was accompanied by a half-naked lad, who, at certain points,
suddenly disappeared, and came into view again after a few minutes,
having made a short cut up some rugged footway between the loops of the
road. Perspiring, even as I sat, in the blaze of the sun, I envied the
boy his breath and muscle. Now and then he slaked his thirst at a stone
fountain by the wayside, not without reverencing the blue-hooded
Madonna painted over it. A few lean, brown peasants, bending under
faggots, and one or two carts, passed us before we gained the top, and
half-way up there was a hovel where drink could be bought; but with
these exceptions nothing broke the loneliness of the long, wild ascent.
My man was not talkative, but answered inquiries civilly; only on one
subject was he very curt—that of the two wooden crosses which we
passed just before arriving at the summit; they meant murders. At the
moment when I spoke of them I was stretching my legs in a walk beside
the carriage, the driver walking just in front of me; and something
then happened which is still a puzzle when I recall it. Whether the
thought of crimes had made the man nervous, or whether just then I wore
a peculiarly truculent face, or had made some alarming gesture, all of
a sudden he turned upon me, grasped my arm and asked sharply: “What
have you got in your hand?” I had a bit of fern, plucked a few minutes
before, and with surprise I showed it; whereupon he murmured an
apology, said something about making haste, and jumped to his seat. An
odd little incident.
At an unexpected turn of the road there spread before me a vast
prospect; I looked down upon inland Calabria. It was a valley broad
enough to be called a plain, dotted with white villages, and backed by
the mass of mountains which now, as in old time, bear the name of Great
Sila. Through this landscape flowed the river Crati—the ancient
Crathis; northward it curved, and eastward, to fall at length into the
Ionian Sea, far beyond my vision. The river Crathis, which flowed by
the walls of Sybaris. I stopped the horses to gaze and wonder; gladly I
would have stood there for hours. Less interested, and impatient to get
on, the driver pointed out to me the direction of Cosenza, still at a
great distance. He added the information that, in summer, the
well-to-do folk of Cosenza go to Paola for sea-bathing, and that they
always perform the journey by night. I, listening carelessly amid my
dream, tried to imagine the crossing of those Calabrian hills under a
summer sun! By summer moonlight it must be wonderful.
We descended at a sharp pace, all the way through a forest of
chestnuts, the fruit already gathered, the golden leaves rustling in
their fall. At the foot lies the village of San Fili, and here we left
the crazy old cart which we had dragged so far. A little further, and