I Was Not Encouraged,
However, To Undertake This Study, The Manager Evidently Suspecting Some
Ulterior Motive To Underlie My Simple Questions.
He was not at all
responsive to friendly overtures.
Restive at first, he soon waxed
ambiguous, and finally taciturn. Perhaps he thought I was a tax-gatherer
in disguise. A large structure combining the features of palace,
fortress and convent occupies an eminence, and is supposed by some to
stand on the site of old Heracleia; it was erected by the Jesuits; the
workpeople live in humble dwellings that cluster around it. Those that
are now engaged in cutting the corn receive a daily wage of two carlini
(eightpence) - the Bourbon coinage still survives in name.
You walk to this building from the station along an avenue of eucalypti
planted some forty years ago. Detesting, as I do, the whole tribe of gum
trees, I never lose an opportunity of saying exactly what I think about
this particularly odious representative of the brood, this eyesore, this
grey-haired scarecrow, this reptile of a growth with which a pack of
misguided enthusiasts have disfigured the entire Mediterranean basin.
They have now realized that it is useless as a protection against
malaria. Soon enough they will learn that instead of preventing the
disease, it actually fosters it, by harbouring clouds of mosquitoes
under its scraggy so-called foliage. These abominations may look better
on their native heath: I sincerely hope they do. Judging by the "Dead
Heart of Australia" - a book which gave me a nightmare from which I shall
never recover - I should say that a varnished hop-pole would be an
artistic godsend out there.
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