Twilight reigns in this maze of tall deciduous trees. There is thick
undergrowth, too; and I measured an old lentiscus - a shrub, in
Italy - which was three metres in circumference. But the exotic feature
of the grove is its wealth of creeping vines that clamber up the trunks,
swinging from one tree-top to another, and allowing the merest threads
of sunlight to filter through their matted canopy. Policoro has the
tangled beauty of a tropical swamp. Rank odours arise from the decaying
leaves and moist earth; and once within that verdant labyrinth, you
might well fancy yourself in some primeval region of the globe, where
the foot of man has never penetrated.
Yet long ago it resounded with the din of battle and the trumpeting of
elephants - in that furious first battle between Pyrrhus and the Romans.
And here, under the very soil on which you stand, lies buried, they say,
the ancient city of Siris.
They have dug canals to drain off the moisture as much as possible, but
the ground is marshy in many places and often quite impassable,
especially in winter. None the less, winter is the time when a little
shooting is done here, chiefly wild boars and roe-deer. They are driven
down towards the sea, but only as far as the railway line. Those that
escape into the lower portions are safe for another year, as this is
never shot over but kept as a permanent preserve. I have been told that
red-deer were introduced, ut that the experiment failed; probably the
country was too not and damp. In his account of Calabria, Duret de Tavel
[Footnote: An English translation of his book appeared in 1832.]
sometimes speaks of killing the fallow-deer, an autochthonous
Tyrrhenian beast which is now extinct on the mainland in its wild state.
Nor can he be confounding it with the roe, since he mentions the two
together - for instance, in the following note from Corigliano (February,
1809), which must make the modern Calabrian's mouth water:
"Game has multiplied to such an extent that the fields are ravaged, and
we are rendering a real service in destroying it. I question whether
there exists in Europe a country offering more varied species. . . . We
return home followed by carriages and mules loaded with wild boars,
roe-deer, fallow-deer, hares, pheasants, wild duck, wild geese - to say
nothing of foxes and wolves, of which we have already killed an immense
quantity."
The pheasants seem to have likewise died out, save in royal preserves.
They were introduced into Calabria by that mighty hunter Frederick II.
The parcelling out of many of these big properties has been followed by
a destruction of woodland and complete disappearance of game.
