One
Wonders How All These Delicately Nurtured Creatures Can Have Survived At
Rossano, If Their Sleeping Accommodation - -
You might live here some little time before realizing that this place,
which seems to slope gently downhill against a pleasing background of
wooded mountains, is capable of being strongly fortified.
It lies, like
other inland Calabrian (and Etruscan) cities, on ground enclosed by
stream-beds, and one of these forms a deep gully above which Rossano
towers on a smooth and perpendicular precipice. The upper part of this
wall of rock is grey sandstone; the lower a bed of red granitic matter.
From this coloured stone, which crops up everywhere, the town may have
drawn its name of Rossano (rosso = red); not a very old settlement,
therefore; although certain patriotic philologers insist upon deriving
it from "rus sanum," healthy country. Its older names were Roscia, and
Ruscianum; it is not marked in Peutinger. Countless jackdaws and
kestrels nestle in this cliff, as well as clouds of swifts, both Alpine
and common. These swifts are the ornithological phenomenon of Rossano,
and I think the citizens have cause to be thankful for their existence;
to them I attribute the fact that there are so few flies, mosquitoes,
and other aerial plagues here. If only the amiable birds could be
induced to extend their attentions to the bedrooms as well!
This shady glen at the back of the city, with its sparse tufts of
vegetation and monstrous blocks of deep red stone cloven into rifts and
ravines by the wild waters, has a charm of its own.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 162 of 488
Words from 43197 to 43458
of 131203
