After Exactly Six Hours Fabbrizia Was Reached - A Large Place Whose Name, Like That Of Borgia, Savelli, Carafa And Other Villages On These Southern Hills, Calls Up Associations Utterly Non-Calabrian; Fabbrizia, With Pretentious New Church And Fantastically Dirty Side-Streets.

It lies at the respectable elevation of 900 metres, on the summit of a monstrous landslide which has disfigured the country.

While ascending along the flank of this deformity I was able to see how the authorities have attempted to cope with the mischief and arrest further collapses. This is what they have done. The minute channels of water, that might contribute to the disintegration of the soil by running into this gaping wound from the sides or above, have been artfully diverted from their natural courses; trees and shrubs are planted at its outskirts in order to uphold the earth at these spots by their roots - they have been protected by barbed wire from the grazing of cattle; furthermore, a multitude of wickerwork dykes are thrown across the accessible portions of the scar, to collect the downward-rushing material and tempt winged plant-seeds to establish themselves on the ledges thus formed. To bridle this runaway mountain is no mean task, for such frane are like rodent ulcers, ever enlarging at the edges. With the heat, with every shower of rain, with every breath of wind, the earth crumbles away; there is an eternal trickling, day and night, until some huge boulder is exposed which crashes down, loosening everything in its wild career; a single tempest may disrupture what the patience and ingenuity of years have contrived.

Three more hours or thereabouts will take you to Serra San Bruno along the backbone of southern Italy, through cultivated lands and pasture and lonely stretches of bracken, once covered by woodlands.

It may well be that the townlet has grown up around, or rather near, the far-famed Carthusian monastery. I know nothing of its history save that it has the reputation of being one of the most bigoted places in Calabria - a fact of which the sagacious General Manhes availed himself when he devised his original and effective plan of chastising the inhabitants for a piece of atrocious conduct on their part. He caused all the local priests to be arrested and imprisoned; the churches were closed, and the town placed under what might be called an interdict. The natives took it quietly at first, but soon the terror of the situation dawned upon them. No religious marriages, no baptisms, no funerals - the comforts of heaven refused to living and dead alike. . . . The strain grew intolerable and, in a panic of remorse, the populace hunted down their own brigand-relations and handed them over to Manhes, who duly executed them, one and all. Then the interdict was taken off and the priests set at liberty; and a certain writer tells us that the people were so charmed with the General's humane and businesslike methods that they forthwith christened him "Saint Manhes," a name which, he avers, has clung to him ever since.

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