We Passed, By The Wayside, Several Rude Crosses Marking The Site Of
Accidents Or Murders, As Well As A Large Heap Of Stones, Where-Under Lie
The Bones Of A Man Who Attempted To Traverse These Mountains In
Winter-Time And Was Frozen To Death.
"They found him," the guide told me, "in spring, when the snow melted
from off his body.
There he lay, all fresh and comely! It looked as if
he would presently wake up and continue his march; but he neither spoke
nor stirred. Then they knew he was dead. And they piled all these stones
over him, to prevent the wolves, you understand - - "
Aspromonte deserves its name. It is an incredibly harsh agglomeration of
hill and dale, and the geology of the district, as I learned long ago
from my friend Professor Cortese, reveals a perfect chaos of rocks of
every age, torn into gullies by earthquakes and other cataclysms of the
past - at one place, near Scido, is an old stream of lava. Once the
higher ground, the nucleus of the group, is left behind, the wanderer
finds himself lost in a maze of contorted ravines, winding about without
any apparent system of watershed. Does the liquid flow north or south?
Who can tell! The track crawls in and out of valleys, mounts upwards to
heights of sun-scorched bracken and cistus, descends once more into dewy
glades hemmed in by precipices and overhung by drooping fernery. It
crosses streams of crystal clearness, rises afresh in endless gyrations
under the pines only to vanish, yet again, into the twilight of deeper
abysses, where it skirts the rivulet along precarious ledges, until some
new obstruction blocks the way - so it writhes about for long, long
hours. . . .
Here, on the spot, one can understand how an outlaw like Musolino was
enabled to defy justice, helped, as he was, by the fact that the vast
majority of the inhabitants were favourable to him, and that the officer
in charge of his pursuers was paid a fixed sum for every day he spent in
the chase and presumably found it convenient not to discover his
whereabouts. [Footnote: See next chapter.]
We rested awhile, during these interminable meanderings, under the
shadow of a group of pines.
"Do you see that square patch yonder?" said my man. "It is a cornfield.
There Musolino shot one of his enemies, whom he suspected of giving
information to the police. It was well done."
"How many did he shoot, altogether?"
"Only eighteen. And three of them recovered, more or less; enough to
limp about, at all events. Ah, if you could have seen him, sir! He was
young, with curly fair hair, and a face like a rose. God alone can tell
how many poor people he helped in their distress. And any young girl he
met in the mountains he would help with her load and accompany as far as
her home, right into her father's house, which none of us would have
risked, however much we might have liked it.
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