"So I Went Alone," He Said, "And Those Forests, It Must Be Confessed,
Are Too Savage To Be Photographed.
Now, if my friend had come, he might
have posed for me, sitting comically at the foot of a tree, with crossed
legs, and smoking a cigar, like this.
... Or he might have pretended to
be a wood-cutter, bending forwards and felling a tree . . . tac, tac,
tac . . . without his jacket, of course. That would have made a picture.
But those woods and mountains, all by themselves - no! The camera
revolts. In photography, as in all good art, the human element must
predominate."
It is sad to think that in a few years' time nearly all these forests
will have ceased to exist; another generation will hardly recognize the
site of them. A society from Morbegno (Valtellina) has acquired rights
over the timber, and is hewing down as fast as it can. They import their
own workmen from north Italy, and have built at a cost of two million
francs (say the newspapers) a special funicular railway, 23 kilometres
long, to carry the trunks from the mountain to Francavilla at its foot,
where they are sawn up and conveyed to the railway station of Cerchiara,
near Sibari. This concession, I am told, extends to twenty-five
years - they have now been at work for two, and the results are already
apparent in some almost bare slopes once clothed with these huge
primeval trees.
There are inspectors, some of them conscientious, to see that a due
proportion of the timber is left standing; but we all know what the
average Italian official is, and must be, considering his salary.
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