Now, if my friend had come, he might
have posed for me, sitting comically at the foot of a tree, with crossed
legs, and smoking a cigar, like this. ... Or he might have pretended to
be a wood-cutter, bending forwards and felling a tree . . . tac, tac,
tac . . . without his jacket, of course. That would have made a picture.
But those woods and mountains, all by themselves - no! The camera
revolts. In photography, as in all good art, the human element must
predominate."
It is sad to think that in a few years' time nearly all these forests
will have ceased to exist; another generation will hardly recognize the
site of them. A society from Morbegno (Valtellina) has acquired rights
over the timber, and is hewing down as fast as it can. They import their
own workmen from north Italy, and have built at a cost of two million
francs (say the newspapers) a special funicular railway, 23 kilometres
long, to carry the trunks from the mountain to Francavilla at its foot,
where they are sawn up and conveyed to the railway station of Cerchiara,
near Sibari. This concession, I am told, extends to twenty-five
years - they have now been at work for two, and the results are already
apparent in some almost bare slopes once clothed with these huge
primeval trees.
There are inspectors, some of them conscientious, to see that a due
proportion of the timber is left standing; but we all know what the
average Italian official is, and must be, considering his salary. One
could hardly blame them greatly if, as I have been assured is the case,
they often sell the wood which they are paid to protect.
The same fate is about to overtake the extensive hill forests which lie
on the watershed between Morano and the Tyrrhenian. These, according to
a Castrovillari local paper, have lately been sold to a German firm for
exploitation.
It is useless to lament the inevitable - this modern obsession of
"industrialism" which has infected a country purely agricultural. Nor is
it any great compensation to observe that certain small tracts of
hill-side behind Morano are being carefully reafforested by the
Government at this moment. Whoever wishes to see these beautiful
stretches of woodland ere their disappearance from earth - let him hasten!
After leaving the forest region it is a downhill walk of nearly three
hours to reach Terranova di Pollino, which lies, only 910 metres above
sea-level, against the slope of a wide and golden amphitheatre of hills,
at whose entrance the river Sarmento has carved itself a prodigious
gateway through the rock. A dirty little place; the male inhabitants are
nearly all in America; the old women nearly all afflicted with goitre.
