Let us give the government credit for any number of good ideas. It
actually plants bare spaces; it has instituted a "Festa degli alberi"
akin to the American Arbour Day, whereby it is hoped, though scarcely
believed, that the whole of Italy will ultimately be replenished with
trees; it encourages schools of forestry, supplies plants free of cost
to all who ask for them, despatches commissions and prints reports.
Above all, it talks prodigiously and very much to the purpose.
But it omits to administer its own laws with becoming severity. A few
exemplary fines and imprisonments would have a more salutary effect than
the commissioning of a thousand inspectors whom nobody takes seriously,
and the printing of ten thousand reports which nobody reads.
With a single stroke of the pen the municipalities could put an end to
the worst form of forest extirpation - that on the hill-sides - by
forbidding access to such tracts and placing them under the "vincolo
forestale." To denude slopes in the moist climate and deep soil of
England entails no risk; in this country it is the beginning of the end.
And herein lies the ineptitude of the Italian regulations, which entrust
the collective wisdom of rapacious farmers with measures of this kind,
taking no account of the destructively utilitarian character of the
native mind, of that canni-ness which overlooks a distant profit in its
eagerness to grasp the present - that beast avarice which Horace
recognized as the root of all evil. As if provisions like this of the
"vincolo forestale" were ever carried out! Peasants naturally prefer to
burn the wood in their own chimneys or to sell it; and if a landslide
then crashes down, wrecking houses and vineyards - let the government
compensate the victims!
An ounce of fact -
In one year alone (1903), and in the sole province of Cosenza wherein
San Giovanni lies, there were 156 landslides; they destroyed 1940
hectares of land, and their damage amounted to 432,738 francs. The two
other Calabrian provinces - Reggio and Catanzaro - doubtless also had
their full quota of these catastrophes, all due to mischievous
deforestation. So the bare rock is exposed, and every hope of planting
at an end.
Vox clamantis! The Normans, Anjou and Aragonese concerned themselves
with the proper administration of woodlands. Even the Spanish Viceroys,
that ineffable brood, issued rigorous enactments on the subject; while
the Bourbons (to give the devil his due) actually distinguished
themselves as conservators of forests. As to Napoleon - he was busy
enough, one would think, on this side of the Alps. Yet he found time to
frame wise regulations concerning trees which the present patriotic
parliament, during half a century of frenzied confabulation, has not yet
taken to heart.
How a great man will leave his mark on minutiae!
I passed through the basin of this future lake when, in accordance with
my project, I left San Giovanni to cross the remaining Sila in the
direction of Catanzaro. This getting up at 3.30 a.m., by the way, rather
upsets one's daily routine; at breakfast time I already find myself
enquiring anxiously for dinner.
The Ampollina valley lies high; here, in the dewy grass, I enjoyed what
I well knew would be my last shiver for some time to come; then moved
for a few miles on the further bank of the rivulet along that driving
road which will soon be submerged under the waters of the lake, and
struck up a wooded glen called Barbarano. At its head lies the upland
Circilla.
There is no rock scenery worth mentioning in all this Sila country; no
waterfalls or other Alpine features. It is a venerable granitic
tableland, that has stood here while the proud Apennines were still
slumbering in the oozy bed of ocean - [Footnote: Nissen says that "no
landscape of Italy has lost so little of its original appearance in the
course of history as Calabria." This may apply to the mountains; but the
lowlands have suffered hideous changes.] a region of gentle undulations,
the hill-tops covered with forest-growth, the valleys partly arable and
partly pasture. Were it not for the absence of heather with its peculiar
mauve tints, the traveller might well imagine himself in Scotland. There
is the same smiling alternation of woodland and meadow, the same huge
boulders of gneiss and granite which give a distinctive tone to the
landscape, the same exuberance of living waters. Water, indeed, is one
of the glories of the Sila - everywhere it bubbles forth in chill
rivulets among the stones and trickles down the hill-sides to join the
larger streams that wend their way to the forlorn and fever-stricken
coastlands of Magna Graecia. Often, as I refreshed myself at these icy
fountains, did I thank Providence for making the Sila of primitive rock,
and not of the thirsty Apennine limestone.
"Much water in the Sila," an old shepherd once observed to me, "much
water! And little tobacco."
One of the largest of these rivers is the Neto, the classic Neaithos
sung by Theocritus, which falls into the sea north of Cotrone; San
Giovanni overlooks its raging flood, and, with the help of a little
imagination here and there, its whole course can be traced from
eminences like that of Pettinascura. The very name of these
streams - Neto, Arvo, Lese, Ampollina - are redolent of pastoral life. All
of them are stocked with trout; they meander in their upper reaches
through valleys grazed by far-tinkling flocks of sheep and goats and
grey cattle - the experiment of acclimatizing Swiss cattle has proved a
failure, I know not why - and their banks are brilliant with blossoms.
Later on, in the autumn, the thistles begin to predominate - the finest
of them being a noble ground thistle of pale gold, of which they eat the
unopened bud; it is the counterpart of the silvery one of the Alps.
