This Place Is Unhealthy; Its Water-Supply Is Not What It Should Be, And
Such Commodities As Eggs And Milk Are Rather Dear, Because "The Invalids
Eat Everything" Of That Kind.
Who are the invalids?
Typhoid patients
and, above all, malarious subjects who descend to the plains as
agricultural labourers and return infected to the hills, where they
become partially cured, only to repeat the folly next year. It is the
same at Longobucco and other Sila towns. Altogether, San Giovanni has
grave drawbacks. The streets are too steep for comfort, and despite its
height, the prospect towards the Ionian is intercepted by a ridge; in
point of situation it cannot compare with Savelli or the neighbouring
Casino, which have impressive views both inland, and southward down
undulating slopes that descend in a stately procession of four thousand
feet to the sea, where sparkles the gleaming horn of Cotrone. And the
surroundings of the place are nowise representative of the Sila in a
good sense. The land has been so ruthlessly deforested that it has
become a desert of naked granite rocks; even now, in midsummer, the
citizens are already collecting fuel for their long winter from enormous
distances. As one crawls and skips among these unsavoury tenements, one
cannot help regretting that Saint John the Baptist, or the piety of a
provincial councillor, should have hindered the earthquakes from doing
their obvious duty.
Were I sultan of San Giovanni, I would certainly begin by a general
bombardment. Little in the town is worth preserving from a cataclysm
save the women, and perhaps the old convent on the summit of the hill
where the French lodged during their brigand-wars, and that other one,
famous in the ecclesiastical annals of Calabria - the monastery of
Floriacense, founded at the end of the twelfth century, round which the
town gradually grew up.
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