A structure of stone may have stood here in olden days;
at present it is a diminutive wooden crucifix by the roadside. It marks,
none the less, an important geographical point: the boundary between the
"Greek" Sila which I was now leaving and the Sila Grande, the central
and largest region. Beyond this last-named lies the lesser Sila, or
"Sila Piccola "; and if you draw a line from Rogliano (near Cosenza) to
Cotrone you will approximately strike the watershed which divides the
Sila Grande from this last and most westerly of the three Sila
divisions. After that comes Catanzaro and the valley of the Corace, the
narrowest point of the Italian continent, and then the heights of Serra
and Aspromonte, the true "Italy" of old, that continue as far as Reggio.
Though I passed through some noble groves of chestnut on the way up, the
country here was a treeless waste. Yet it must have been forest up to a
short time ago, for one could see the beautiful vegetable mould which
has not yet had time to be washed down the hill-sides. A driving road
passes the Croce Greca; it joins Acri with San Giovanni, the capital of
Sila Grande, and with Cosenza.
It was another long hour's march, always uphill, before I reached a
spacious green meadow or upland with a few little buildings. The place
is called Verace and lies on the watershed between the upper Crati
valley and the Ionian; thenceforward my walk would be a descent along
the Trionto river, the Traeis of old, as far as Longo-bucco which
overlooks its flood. It was cool here at last, from the altitude and the
decline of day; and hay-making was going on, amid the pastoral din of
cow-bells and a good deal of blithe love-making and chattering.
After some talk with these amiable folks, I passed on to where
the young Traeis bubbles up from the cavernous reservoirs of the earth.
Of those chill and roguish wavelets I took a draught, mindful of the day
when long ago, by these same waters, an irreparable catastrophe
overwhelmed our European civilization. For it was the Traeis near whose
estuary was fought the battle between 300,000 Sybarites (I refuse to
believe these figures) and the men of Croton conducted by their champion
Milo - a battle which led to the destruction of Sybaris and,
incidentally, of Hellenic culture throughout the mainland of Italy. This
was in the same fateful year 510 that witnessed the expulsion of the
Tarquins from Rome and the Pisistratidae from Athens.
Pines, the characteristic tree of the Sila, now begin to appear. Passing
through Verace I had already observed, on the left, a high mountain
entirely decked with them. It is the ridge marked Pale-parto on the map;
the Trionto laves its foot. But the local pronunciation of this name is
Palepite, and I cannot help thinking that here we have a genuine old
Greek name perpetuated by the people and referring to this covering of
hoary pines - a name which the cartographers, arbitrary and ignorant as
they often are, have unconsciously disguised.
