There seem to be none of these beasts available at
Castrovillari.
"To Morano!" they tell me. "It is nearer the mountain, and there you
will find mules plentiful as blackberries. To Morano!"
Morano lies a few miles higher up the valley on the great military road
to Lagonegro, which was built by Murat and cuts through the interior of
Basilicata, rising at Campo Tenese to a height of noo metres. They are
now running a public motor service along this beautiful stretch of 52
kilometres, at the cheap rate of a sou per kilometre.
En route!
POSTSCRIPT. - Another symptom of the south:
Once you have reached the latitude of Naples, the word grazie (thank
you) vanishes from the vocabulary of all save the most cultured. But to
conclude therefrom that one is among a thankless race is not altogether
the right inference. They have a wholly different conception of the
affair. Our septentrional "thanks" is a complicated product in which
gratefulness for things received and for things to come are
unconsciously balanced; while their point of view differs in nothing
from that of the beau-ideal of Greek courtesy, of Achilles, whose mother
procured for him a suit of divine armour from Hephaistos, which he
received without a word of acknowledgment either for her or for the god
who had been put to some little trouble in the matter.
