And To Enliven The Scene, A Steamer
Calls Every Now And Then To Take Passengers To The Tremiti Islands.
One
would like to visit them, if only in memory of those martyrs of
Bourbonism, who were sent in hundreds to these rocks and cast into
dungeons to perish.
I have seen such places; they are vast caverns
artificially excavated below the surface of the earth; into these the
unfortunates were lowered and left to crawl about and rot, the living
mingled with the dead. To this day they find mouldering skeletons,
loaded with heavy iron chains and ball-weights.
A copious spring gushes up on this beach and flows into the sea. It is
sadly neglected. Were I tyrant of Manfredonia, I would build me a fair
marble fountain here, with a carven assemblage of nymphs and
sea-monsters spouting water from their lusty throats, and plashing in
its rivulets. It may well be that the existence of this fount helped to
decide Manfred in his choice of a site for his city; such springs are
rare in this waterless land. And from this same source, very likely, is
derived the local legend of Saint Lorenzo and the Dragon, which is quite
independent of that of Saint Michael the dragon-killer on the heights
above us. These venerable water-spirits, these dracs, are interesting
beasts who went through many metamorphoses ere attaining their present
shape.
Manfredonia lies on a plain sloping very gently seawards - practically
a dead level, and in one of the hottest districts of Italy. Yet, for
some obscure reason, there is no street along the sea itself; the
cross-roads end in abrupt squalor at the shore. One wonders what
considerations - political, aesthetic or hygienic - prevented the
designers of the town from carrying out its general principles of
construction and building a decent promenade by the waves, where the ten
thousand citizens could take the air in the breathless summer evenings,
instead of being cooped up, as they now are, within stifling hot walls.
The choice of Man-fredonia as a port does not testify to any great
foresight on the part of its founder - peace to his shade! It will for
ever slumber in its bay, while commerce passes beyond its reach; it will
for ever be malarious with the marshes of Sipontum at its edges. But
this particular defect of the place is not Manfred's fault, since the
city was razed to the ground by the Turks in 1620, and then built up
anew; built up, says Lenormant, according to the design of the old city.
Perhaps a fear of other Corsair raids induced the constructors to adhere
to the old plan, by which the place could be more easily defended. Not
much of Man-fredonia seems to have been completed when Pacicchelli's
view (1703) was engraved.
Speaking of the weather, the landlady further told me that the wind blew
so hard three months ago - "during that big storm in the winter, don't
you remember?" - that it broke all the iron lamp-posts between the town
and the station. Now here was a statement sounding even more improbable
than her other one about Castel del Monte, but admitting of
verification. Wheezing and sneezing, I crawled forth, and found it
correct. It must have been a respectable gale, since the cast-iron
supports are snapped in half, every one of them.
Those Turks, by the way, burnt the town on that memorable occasion. That
was a common occurrence in those days. Read any account of their
incursions into Italy during this and the preceding centuries, and you
will find that the corsairs burnt the towns whenever they had time to
set them alight. They could not burn them nowadays, and this points to a
total change in economic conditions. Wood was cut down so heedlessly
that it became too scarce for building purposes, and stone took its
place. This has altered domestic architecture; it has changed the
landscape, denuding the hill-sides that were once covered with timber;
it has impoverished the country by converting fruitful plains into
marshes or arid tracts of stone swept by irregular and intermittent
floods; it has modified, if I mistake not, the very character of the
people. The desiccation of the climate has entailed a desiccation of
national humour.
Muratori has a passage somewhere in his "Antiquities" regarding the old
method of construction and the wooden shingles, scandulae, in use for
roofing - I must look it up, if ever I reach civilized regions again.
At the municipality, which occupies the spacious apartments of a former
Dominican convent, they will show you the picture of a young girl, one
of the Beccarmi family, who was carried off at a tender age in one of
these Turkish raids, and subsequently became "Sultana." Such captive
girls generally married sultans - or ought to have married them; the wish
being father to the thought. But the story is disputed; rightly, I
think. For the portrait is painted in the French manner, and it is
hardly likely that a harem-lady would have been exhibited to a European
artist. The legend goes on to say that she was afterwards liberated by
the Knights of Malta, together with her Turkish son who, as was meet and
proper, became converted to Christianity and died a monk. The Beccarmi
family (of Siena, I fancy) might find some traces of her in their
archives. Ben trovato, at all events. When one looks at the pretty
portrait, one cannot blame any kind of "Sultan" for feeling
well-disposed towards the original.
The weather has shown some signs of improvement and tempted me, despite
the persistent "scirocco" mood, to a few excursions into the
neighbourhood. But there seem to be no walks hereabouts, and the hills,
three miles distant, are too remote for my reduced vitality. The
intervening region is a plain of rock carved so smoothly, in places, as
to appear artificially levelled with the chisel; large tracts of it are
covered with the Indian fig (cactus). In the shade of these grotesque
growths lives a dainty flora:
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