The Ionian shore is not
malarious because it is desert - it is desert because malarious. The
richest tracts in Greece are known to be very dangerous, and it is the
same in Italy. Malaria and intensive agriculture go uncommonly well
together. The miserable anopheles-mosquito loves the wells that are sunk
for the watering of the immense orange and lemon plantations in the
Reggio district; it displays a perverse predilection for the minute
puddles left by the artificial irrigation of the fields that are covered
with fruit and vegetables. This artificial watering, in fact, seems to
be partly responsible for the spread of the disease. It is doubtful
whether the custom goes back into remote antiquity, for the climate used
to be moister and could dispense with these practices. Certain products,
once grown in Calabria, no longer thrive there, on account of the
increased dryness and lack of rainfall.
But there are some deadly regions, even along this Tyrrhenian shore.
Such is the plain of Maida, for instance, where stood not long ago the
forest of Sant' Eufemia, safe retreat of Parafante and other brigand
heroes. The level lands of Rosarno and Gioia are equally ill-reputed. A
French battalion stationed here in the summer of 1807 lost over sixty
men in fourteen days, besides leaving two hundred invalids in the
hospital at Monteleone. Gioia is so malarious that in summer every one
of the inhabitants who can afford the price of a ticket goes by the
evening train to Palmato sleep there. You will do well, by the way, to
see something of the oil industry of Palmi, if time permits. In good
years, 200,000 quintals of olive oil are manufactured in the regions of
which it is the commercial centre. Not long ago, before modern methods
of refining were introduced, most of this oil was exported to Russia, to
be burned in holy lamps; nowadays it goes for the most part to Lucca, to
be adulterated for foreign markets (the celebrated Lucca oil, which the
simple Englishman regards as pure); only the finest quality is sent
elsewhere, to Nice. From Gioia there runs a postal diligence once a day
to Delianuova of which I might have availed myself, had I not preferred
to traverse the country on foot.
The journey from Reggio to Bagnara on this fair summer morning, along
the rippling Mediterranean, was short enough, but sufficiently long to
let me overhear the following conversation:
A. - What a lovely sea! It is good, after all, to take three or four
baths a year. What think you?
B. - I? No. For thirteen years I have taken no baths. But they are
considered good for children.
The calamities that Bagnara has suffered in the past have been so
numerous, so fierce and so varied that, properly speaking, the town has
no right to exist any longer.
