The Long Shore Of The Ionian Sea Suggested Many A Halting-Place.
Best Of All, I Should Have Liked To Swing A Wallet On My Shoulder
And Make The Whole Journey On Foot; But This For Many Reasons Was
Impossible.
I could only mark points of the railway where some sort
of food or lodging might be hoped for, and the first of these
stoppages was Metaponto.
Official time-bills of the month marked a train for Metaponto at
4.56 A.M., and this I decided to take, as it seemed probable that I
might find a stay of some hours sufficient, and so be able to resume
my journey before night. I asked the waiter to call me at a quarter
to four. In the middle of the night (as it seemed to me) I was
aroused by a knocking, and the waiter's voice called to me that, if
I wished to leave early for Metaponto, I had better get up at once,
as the departure of the train had been changed to 4.15 - it was now
half-past three. There ensued an argument, sustained, on my side,
rather by the desire to stay in bed this cold morning than by any
faith in the reasonableness of the railway company. There must be a
mistake! The orario for the month gave 4.56, and how could the
time of a train be changed without public notice? Changed it was,
insisted the waiter; it had happened a few days ago, and they had
only heard of it at the hotel this very morning. Angry and
uncomfortable, I got my clothes on, and drove to the station, where
I found that a sudden change in the time-table, without any regard
for persons relying upon the official guide, was taken as a matter
of course. In chilly darkness I bade farewell to Taranto.
At a little after six, when palest dawn was shimmering on the sea, I
found myself at Metaponto, with no possibility of doing anything for
a couple of hours. Metaponto is a railway station, that and nothing
more, and, as a station also calls itself a hotel, I straightway
asked for a room, and there dozed until sunshine improved my humour
and stirred my appetite. The guidebook had assured me of two things:
that a vehicle could be had here for surveying the district, and
that, under cover behind the station, one would find a little
collection of antiquities unearthed hereabout. On inquiry, I found
that no vehicle, and no animal capable of being ridden, existed at
Metaponto; also that the little museum had been transferred to
Naples. It did not pay to keep the horse, they told me; a stranger
asked for it only "once in a hundred years." However, a lad was
forthcoming who would guide me to the ruins. I breakfasted (the only
thing tolerable being the wine), and we set forth.
It was a walk of some two or three miles, by a cart road, through
fields just being ploughed for grain.
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