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.
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