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.
