The driving road ends at the cemetery. Thence onward
a pathway skirts the sea at the foot of the clay-hills; passes the
sunken wells; climbs up and down steepish gradients and so attains the
plateau at whose extremity stands the lighthouse, the column, and a few
white bungalows - summer-residences of Cotrone citizens.
A day of shimmering heat. . . .
The ground is parched. Altogether, it is a poor and thinly peopled
stretch of land between Cotrone and Capo Rizzuto. No wonder the wolves
are famished. Nine days ago one of them actually ventured upon the road
near the cemetery, in daylight.
Yet there is some plant-life, and I was pleased to see, emerging from
the bleak sand-dunes, the tufts of the well-known and conspicuous sea
lily in full flower. Wishful to obtain a few blossoms, I asked the boy
to descend from his mule, but he objected.
"Non si toccano questi fiori," he said. These flowers are not to be
touched.
Their odour displeased him. Like the Arab, the uncultivated Italian is
insensitive to certain smells that revolt us; while he cannot endure, on
the other hand, the scent of some flowers.
