An ecclesiastical writer has proved that Calabria was inhabited
before the Noachian flood; and Rossano, we may be sure, was one of the
favourite haunts of the antediluvians. None the less, it is good to rest
in a clean bed, for a change; and to feed off a clean plate.
We are in the south. One sees it in sundry small ways - in the behaviour
of the cats, for instance. . . .
The Tarentines, they say, imported the cat into Europe. If those of
south Italy still resemble their old Nubian ancestors, the beast would
assuredly not have been worth the trouble of acclimatizing. On entering
these regions, one of the first things that strikes me is the difference
between the appearance of cats and dogs hereabouts, and in England or
any northern country; and the difference in their temperaments. Our dogs
are alert in their movements and of wideawake features; here they are
arowsy and degraded mongrels, with expressionless eyes. Our cats are
sleek and slumberous; here they prowl about haggard, shifty and
careworn, their fur in patches and their ears a-tremble from nervous
anxiety. That domestic animals such as these should be fed at home does
not commend itself to the common people; they must forage for their food
abroad. Dogs eat offal, while the others hunt for lizards in the fields.
A lizard diet is supposed to reduce their weight (it would certainly
reduce mine); but I suspect that southern cats are emaciated not only
from this cause, but from systematic starvation. Many a kitten is born
that never tastes a drop of cow's milk from the cradle to the grave, and
little enough of its own mother's.
To say that our English zoophilomania - our cult of lap-dogs - smacks of
degeneracy does not mean that I sympathize with the ill-treatment of
beasts which annoys many visitors to these parts and has been attributed
to "Saracenic" influences. Wrongly, of course; one might as well
attribute it to the old Greeks. [Footnote: Whose attitude towards
animals, by the way, was as far removed from callousness as from
sentimentalism. We know how those Hellenic oxen fared who had laboured
to draw up heavy blocks for the building of a temple - how, on the
completion of their task, they were led into green fields, there to
pasture unmolested for the rest of their lives. We know that the Greeks
were appreciative of the graces and virtues of canine nature - is not the
Homeric Argo still the finest dog-type in literature? Yet to them the
dog, even he of the tender Anthology, remained what he is: a tamed
beast. The Greeks, sitting at dinner, resented the insolence of a
creature that, watching every morsel as it disappeared into the mouth of
its master, plainly discovered by its physiognomy the desire, the
presumed right, to devour what he considered fit only for himself.
Whence that profound word [Greek: kunopes] - dog-eyed, shameless. In
contrast to this sanity, observe what an Englishman can read into a
dog's eye:
That liquid, melancholy eye,
From whose pathetic, soul-fed springs
Seemed surging the Virgilian cry -
The sense of tears in mortal things. . . .
[That is how Matthew Arnold interprets the feelings of Fido, watching his
master at work upon a tender beefsteak. . . .]
Poor Saracens! They are a sort of whipping-boy, all over the country.
The chief sinner in this respect is the Vatican, which has authorized
cruelty to animals by its official teaching. When Lord Odo-Russell
enquired of the Pope regarding the foundation of a society for the
prevention of cruelty to animals in Italy, the papal answer was: "Such
an association could not be sanctioned by the Holy See, being founded
on a theological error, to wit, that Christians owed any duties to
animals." This language has the inestimable and rather unusual merit of
being perspicuous. Nevertheless, Ouida's flaming letters to "The Times"
inaugurated an era of truer humanity. . . .
And the lateness of the dining-hour - another symptom of the south. It
was eleven o'clock when I sat down to dinner on the night of my arrival,
and habitues of the hotel, engineers and so forth, were still dropping
in for their evening meal. Appetite comes more slowly than ever, now
that the heats have begun.
They have begun in earnest. The swoon of summer is upon the land, the
grass is cut, cicadas are chirping overhead. Despite its height of a
thousand feet, Castrovillari must be blazing in August, surrounded as it
is by parched fields and an amphitheatre of bare limestone hills that
exhale the sunny beams. You may stroll about these fields observing the
construction of the line which is to pass through Cassano, a pretty
place, famous for its wine and mineral springs; or studying the habits
of the gigantic grasshoppers that hang in clusters to the dried thistles
and start off, when scared, with the noise of a covey of partridges; or
watching how the cows are shod, at this season, to thresh the corn. Old
authors are unanimous in declaring that the town was embowered in oak
forests; as late as 1844 it was lamented that this "ancient barbarous
custom" of cutting them down had not yet been discontinued. The
mischief is now done, and it would be interesting to know the difference
between the present summer temperature and that of olden days.
The manna ash used to be cultivated in these parts. I cannot tell
whether its purgative secretion is still in favour. The confusion
between this stuff and the biblical manna gave rise to the legends about
Calabria where "manna droppeth as dew from Heaven." Sandys says it was
prepared out of the mulberry. He copied assiduously, did old Sandys, and
yet found room for some original blunders of his own.
