A Little Digging Has Recently Been Done, And Things Of
Interest Have Been Found; But Discovery On A Wide Scale Is Still To
Be Attempted.
Lenormant praises the landscape hereabouts as of "incomparable
beauty"; unfortunately I saw it in a sunless day, and at
unfavourable moments I was strongly reminded of the Essex coast -
grey, scrubby fiats, crossed by small streams, spreading wearily
seaward.
One had only to turn inland to correct this mood; the
Calabrian mountains, even without sunshine, had their wonted grace.
Moreover, cactus and agave, frequent in the foreground, preserved
the southern character of the scene. The great plain between the
hills and the sea grows very impressive; so silent it is, so
mournfully desolate, so haunted with memories of vanished glory. I
looked at the Crathis - the Crati of Cosenza - here beginning to
spread into a sea-marsh; the waters which used to flow over golden
sands, which made white the oxen, and sunny-haired the children,
that bathed in them, are now lost amid a wilderness poisoned by
their own vapours.
The railway station, like all in this region, was set about with
eucalyptus. Great bushes of flowering rosemary scented the air, and
a fine cassia tree, from which I plucked blossoms, yielded a subtler
perfume. Our lunch was not luxurious; I remember only, as at all
worthy of Sybaris, a palatable white wine called Muscato dei
Saraceni. Appropriate enough amid this vast silence to turn one's
thoughts to the Saracens, who are so largely answerable for the ages
of desolation that have passed by the Ionian Sea.
Then on for Taranto, where we arrived in the afternoon. Meaning to
stay for a week or two I sought a pleasant room in a well-situated
hotel, and I found one with a good view of town and harbour. The
Taranto of old days, when it was called Taras, or later Tarentum,
stood on a long peninsula, which divides a little inland sea from
the great sea without. In the Middle Ages the town occupied only the
point of this neck of land, which, by the cutting of an artificial
channel, had been made into an island: now again it is spreading
over the whole of the ancient site; great buildings of
yellowish-white stone, as ugly as modern architect can make them,
and plainly far in excess of the actual demand for habitations, rise
where Phoenicians and Greeks and Romans built after the nobler
fashion of their times. One of my windows looked towards the old
town, with its long sea-wall where fishermen's nets hung drying, the
dome of its Cathedral, the high, squeezed houses, often with gardens
on the roofs, and the swing-bridge which links it to the mainland;
the other gave me a view across the Mare Piccolo, the Little Sea (it
is some twelve miles round about), dotted in many parts with crossed
stakes which mark the oyster-beds, and lined on this side with a
variety of shipping moored at quays.
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