Almost; since for some reason or
other (perhaps on account of the insufferably foul nature of the soil)
their foliage is here thickly tufted; it glows like burnished bronze in
the sunshine, like enamelled scales of green and gold. These eucalypti
are unique in Italy. Gazing upon them, my heart softened and I almost
forgave the gums their manifold iniquities, their diabolical thirst,
their demoralizing aspect of precocious senility and vice, their peeling
bark suggestive of unmentionable skin diseases, and that system of
radication which is nothing short of a scandal on this side of the
globe. . . .
In the exuberance of his joy at the prospect of getting rid of me, the
manager of the estate lent me a dog-cart to convey me to the forest's
edge, as well as a sleepy-looking boy for a guide, warning me, however,
not to put so much as the point of my nose inside the jungle, on account
of the malaria which has already begun to infect the district. One sees
all too many wan faces hereabouts. Visible from the intervening plain is
a large building on the summit of a hill; it is called Acinapura, and
this is the place I should have gone to, had time permitted, for the
sake of the fine view which it must afford over the whole Policoro region.
Herds of buffaloes wallow in the mire. An old bull, reposing in solitary
grandeur, allowed me so near an approach that I was able to see two or
three frogs hopping about his back, and engaged in catching the
mosquitoes that troubled him. How useful, if something equally efficient
and inexpensive could be devised for humanity!
We entered the darksome forest. The boy, who had hitherto confined
himself to monosyllables, suddenly woke up under its mysterious
influence; he became alert and affable; he related thrilling tales of
the outlaws who used to haunt these thickets, lamenting that those happy
days were over. There were the makings of a first-class brigand in
Paolo. I stimulated his brave fancy; and it was finally proposed that I
should establish myself permanently with the manager of the estate, so
that on Sundays we could have some brigand-sport together, on the sly.
Then out again - into the broad and sunlit bed of the Sinno. The water
now ripples in bland content down a waste of shining pebbles. But its
wintry convulsions are terrific, and higher up the stream, where the
banks are steep, many lives are lost in those angry floods that rush
down from the hill-sides, filling the riverbed with a turmoil of crested
waves. At such moments, these torrents put on new faces. From placid
waterways they are transformed into living monsters, Aegirs or dragons,
that roll themselves seaward, out of their dark caverns, in tawny coils
of destruction.
XIV
DRAGONS
And precisely this angry aspect of the waters has been acclaimed as one
of the origins of that river-dragon idea which used to be common in
south Italy, before the blight of Spaniardism fell upon the land and
withered up the pagan myth-making faculty. There are streams still
perpetuating this name - the rivulet Dragone, for instance, which falls
into the Ionian not far from Cape Colonne.
A non-angry aspect of them has also been suggested as the origin: the
tortuous wanderings of rivers in the plains, like the Meander, that
recall the convolutions of the serpent. For serpent and dragon are apt
to be synonymous with the ancients.
Both these explanations, I think, are late developments in the evolution
of the dragon-image. They leave one still puzzling as to what may be the
aboriginal conception underlying this legendary beast of earth and
clouds and waters. We must go further back.
What is a dragon? An animal, one might say, which looks or regards
(Greek drakon); so called, presumably, from its terrible eyes. Homer
has passages which bear out this interpretation:
[Greek: Smerdaleon de dedorken], etc.
Now the Greeks were certainly sensitive to the expression of animal
eyes - witness "cow-eyed" Hera, or the opprobrious epithet "dog-eyed";
altogether, the more we study what is left of their zoological
researches, the more we realize what close observers they were in
natural history. Aristotle, for instance, points out sexual differences
in the feet of the crawfish which were overlooked up to a short time
ago. And Hesiod also insists upon the dragon's eyes. Yet it is
significant that ophis, the snake, is derived, like drakon, from a
root meaning nothing more than to perceive or regard. There is no
connotation of ferocity in either of the words. Gesner long ago suspected
that the dragon was so called simply from its keen or rapid perception.
One likes to search for some existing animal prototype of a fabled
creature like this, seeing that to invent such things out of sheer
nothing is a feat beyond human ingenuity - or, at least, beyond what the
history of others of their kind leads us to expect. It may well be that
the Homeric writer was acquainted with the Uromastix lizard that occurs
in Asia Minor, and whoever has watched this beast, as I have done,
cannot fail to have been impressed by its contemplative gestures, as if
it were gazing intently (drakon) at something. It is, moreover, a
"dweller in rocky places," and more than this, a vegetarian - an "eater
of poisonous herbs" as Homer somewhere calls his dragon. So Aristotle
says: "When the dragon has eaten much fruit, he seeks the juice of the
bitter lettuce; he has been seen to do this."
Are we tracking the dragon to his lair? Is this the aboriginal beast?
Not at all, I should say. On the contrary, this is a mere side-issue, to
follow which would lead us astray.
