Certain White
Spots Which I Had Discovered At The End Of The Promontory Were
Little Villas, Occupied In Summer By The Well-To-Do Citizens Of
Cotrone; The Doctor Himself Owned One, Which Had Belonged To His
Father Before Him.
Some of the earliest memories of his boyhood were
connected with the Cape:
When he had lessons to learn by heart, he
often used to recite them walking round and round the great column.
In the garden of his villa he at times amused himself with digging,
and a very few turns of the spade sufficed to throw out some relic
of antiquity. Certain Americans, he said, obtained permission not
long ago from the proprietor of the ground on which the temple stood
to make serious excavations, but as soon as the Italians heard of
it, they claimed the site as a national monument; the work was
forbidden, and the soil had to be returned to its former state. Hard
by the ancient sanctuary is a chapel, consecrated to the Madonna del
Capo; thither the people of Cotrone make pilgrimages, and hold upon
the Cape a rude festival, which often ends in orgiastic riot.
All the surface of the promontory is bare; not a tree, not a bush,
save for a little wooded hollow called Fossa del Lupo - the wolf's
den. There, says legend, armed folk of Cotrone used to lie in wait
to attack the corsairs who occasionally landed for water.
When I led him to talk of Cotrone and its people, the Doctor could
but confirm my observations. He contrasted the present with the
past; this fever-stricken and waterless village with the great city
which was called the healthiest in the world. In his opinion the
physical change had resulted from the destruction of forests, which
brought with it a diminution of the rainfall. "At Cotrone," he said,
"we have practically no rain. A shower now and then, but never a
wholesome downpour." He had no doubt that, in ancient times, all the
hills of the coast were wooded, as Sila still is, and all the rivers
abundantly supplied with water. To-day there was scarce a healthy
man in Cotrone: no one had strength to resist a serious illness.
This state of things he took very philosophically; I noticed once
more the frankly mediaeval spirit in which he regarded the populace.
Talking on, he interested me by enlarging upon the difference
between southern Italians and those of the north. Beyond Rome a
Calabrian never cared to go; he found himself in a foreign country,
where his tongue betrayed him, and where his manners were too
noticeably at variance with those prevailing. Italian unity, I am
sure, meant little to the good Doctor, and appealed but coldly to
his imagination.
I declared to him at length that I could endure no longer this
dreary life of the sick-room; I must get into the open air, and, if
no harm came of the experiment, I should leave for Catanzaro.
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