Here I Reposed Awhile, Watching The Crossbills, Wondrously Tame, At Work
Among The Branches Overhead, And The Emerald Lizard Peering Out Of The
Bracken At My Side.
This lucertone, as they call it, is a local beast,
very abundant in some spots (at Venosa and Patirion, for example); it is
elsewhere conspicuous by its absence.
The natives are rather afraid of
it, and still more so of the harmless gecko, the "salamide," which is
reputed highly poisonous.
Then up again, through dells and over uplands, past bubbling streams,
sometimes across sunlit meadows, but oftener in the leafy shelter of
maples and pines - a long but delightful track, winding always high above
the valleys of the Neto and Lese. At last, towards midday, I struck the
driving road that connects San Giovanni with Savelli, crossed a bridge
over the foaming Neto, and climbed into the populous and dirty streets
of the town - the "Siberia of Calabria," as it may well be, for seven
months of the year.
At this season, thanks to its elevation of 1050 metres, the temperature
is all that could be desired, and the hotel, such as it is, compares
favourably indeed with the den at Longobucco. Instantly I felt at home
among these good people, who recognized me, and welcomed me with the
cordiality of old friends.
"Well," they asked, "and have you found it at last?"
They remembered my looking for the double flute, the tibiae pares,
some years ago.
It will not take you long to discover that the chief objects of interest
in San Giovanni are the women.
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