Old Calabria | Page 7

corsairs burnt the towns whenever they had time
to set them alight. They could not burn them nowadays, and this points
to a total change in economic conditions. Wood was cut down so
heedlessly that it became too scarce for building purposes, and stone

took its place. This has altered domestic architecture; it has changed the
landscape, denuding the hill-sides that were once covered with timber;
it has impoverished the country by converting fruitful plains into
marshes or arid tracts of stone swept by irregular and intermittent
floods; it has modified, if I mistake not, the very character of the people.
The desiccation of the climate has entailed a desiccation of national
humour.
Muratori has a passage somewhere in his "Antiquities" regarding the
old method of construction and the wooden shingles, scandulae, in use
for roofing--I must look it up, if ever I reach civilized regions again.
At the municipality, which occupies the spacious apartments of a
former Dominican convent, they will show you the picture of a young
girl, one of the Beccarmi family, who was carried off at a tender age in
one of these Turkish raids, and subsequently became "Sultana." Such
captive girls generally married sultans--or ought to have married them;
the wish being father to the thought. But the story is disputed; rightly, I
think. For the portrait is painted in the French manner, and it is hardly
likely that a harem-lady would have been exhibited to a European artist.
The legend goes on to say that she was afterwards liberated by the
Knights of Malta, together with her Turkish son who, as was meet and
proper, became converted to Christianity and died a monk. The
Beccarmi family (of Siena, I fancy) might find some traces of her in
their archives. Ben trovato, at all events. When one looks at the pretty
portrait, one cannot blame any kind of "Sultan" for feeling
well-disposed towards the original.
The weather has shown some signs of improvement and tempted me,
despite the persistent "scirocco" mood, to a few excursions into the
neighbourhood. But there seem to be no walks hereabouts, and the hills,
three miles distant, are too remote for my reduced vitality. The
intervening region is a plain of rock carved so smoothly, in places, as to
appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are covered
with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque growths
lives a dainty flora: trembling grasses of many kinds, rue, asphodel,
thyme, the wild asparagus, a diminutive blue iris, as well as patches of

saxifrage that deck the stone with a brilliant enamel of red and yellow.
This wild beauty makes one think how much better the graceful
wrought-iron balconies of the town would look if enlivened with
blossoms, with pendent carnations or pelargonium; but there is no great
display of these things; the deficiency of water is a characteristic of the
place; it is a flowerless and songless city. The only good drinking-water
is that which is bottled at the mineral springs of Monte Vulture and
sold cheaply enough all over the country. And the mass of the country
people have small charm of feature. Their faces seem to have been
chopped with a hatchet into masks of sombre virility; a hard life amid
burning limestone deserts is reflected in their countenances.
None the less, they have a public garden; even more immature than that
of Lucera, but testifying to greater taste. Its situation, covering a forlorn
semicircular tract of ground about the old Anjou castle, is a priori a
good one. But when the trees are fully grown, it will be impossible to
see this fine ruin save at quite close quarters--just across the moat.
I lamented this fact to a solitary gentleman who was strolling about
here and who replied, upon due deliberation:
"One cannot have everything."
Then he added, as a suggestive afterthought:
"Inasmuch as one thing sometimes excludes another."
I pause, to observe parenthetically that this habit of uttering platitudes
in the grand manner as though disclosing an idea of vital novelty
(which Charles Lamb, poor fellow, thought peculiar to natives of
Scotland) is as common among Italians as among Englishmen. But
veiled in sonorous Latinisms, the staleness of such remarks assumes an
air of profundity.
"For my part," he went on, warming to his theme, "I am thoroughly
satisfied. Who will complain of the trees? Only a few makers of bad
pictures. They can go elsewhere. Our country, dear sir, is encrusted,
with old castles and other feudal absurdities, and if I had the

management of things----"
The sentence was not concluded, for at that moment his hat was blown
off by a violent gust of wind, and flew merrily over beds of flowering
marguerites in the direction of the main street, while he