It Was Exhilarating To Traverse These Middle Heights With Their Aerial
Views Over The Ionian And Down Olive-Covered Hill-Sides Towards The Wide
Valley Of The Crati And The Lofty Pollino Range, Now Swimming In
Midsummer Haze.
The road winds in and out of gullies where rivulets
descend from the mountains; they are clothed in cork-oak, ilex, and
other trees; golden orioles, jays, hoopoes and rollers flash among the
foliage.
In winter these hills are swept by boreal blasts from the
Apennines, but at this season it is a delightful tract of land.
XXIII
ALBANIANS AND THEIR COLLEGE
San Demetrio, famous for its Italo-Albanian College, lies on a fertile
incline sprinkled with olives and mulberries and chestnuts, fifteen
hundred feet above sea-level. They tell me that within the memory of
living man no Englishman has ever entered the town. This is quite
possible; I have not yet encountered a single English traveller, during
my frequent wanderings over South Italy. Gone are the days of Keppel
Craven and Swinburne, of Eustace and Brydone and Hoare! You will come
across sporadic Germans immersed in Hohenstaufen records, or searching
after Roman antiquities, butterflies, minerals, or landscapes to
paint - you will meet them in the most unexpected places; but never an
Englishman. The adventurous type of Anglo-Saxon probably thinks the
country too tame; scholars, too trite; ordinary tourists, too dirty. The
accommodation and food in San Demetrio leave much to be desired; its
streets are irregular lanes, ill-paved with cobbles of gneiss and
smothered under dust and refuse.
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