All Around Lay Orchards Of Orange
Trees, The Finest I Had Ever Seen, And Over Their Solid Masses Of
Dark Foliage, Thick Hung With Ripening Fruit, Poured The Splendour
Of The Western Sky.
It was a picture unsurpassable in richness of
tone; the dense leafage of deepest, warmest green glowed and
flashed, its magnificence heightened by the blaze of the countless
golden spheres adorning it.
Beyond, the magic sea, purple and
crimson as the sun descended upon the vanishing horizon. Eastward,
above the slopes of Sila, stood a moon almost at its full, the
yellow of an autumn leaf, on a sky soft-flushed with rose.
In my geography it is written that between Catanzaro and the sea lie
the gardens of the Hesperides.
CHAPTER XII
CATANZARO
For half an hour the train slowly ascends. The carriages are of
special construction, light and many-windowed, so that one has good
views of the landscape. Very beautiful was this long, broad,
climbing valley, everywhere richly wooded; oranges and olives, carob
and lentisk and myrtle, interspersed with cactus (its fruit, the
prickly fig, all gathered) and with the sword-like agave. Glow of
sunset lingered upon the hills: in the green hollow a golden
twilight faded to dusk. The valley narrowed; it became a gorge
between dark slopes which closed together and seemed to bar advance.
Here the train stopped, and all the passengers (some half-dozen)
alighted.
The sky was still clear enough to show the broad features of the
scene before me. I looked up to a mountain side, so steep that
towards the summit it appeared precipitous, and there upon the
height, dimly illumined with a last reflex of after-glow, my eyes
distinguished something which might be the outline of walls and
houses. This, I knew, was the situation of Catanzaro, but one could
not easily imagine by what sort of approach the city would be
gained; in the thickening twilight, no trace of a road was
discernible, and the flanks of the mountain, a ravine yawning on
either hand, looked even more abrupt than the ascent immediately
before me.
There, however, stood the diligenza which was somehow to convey me
to Catanzaro; I watched its loading with luggage-merchandise and
mail-bags - whilst the exquisite evening melted into night. When I
had thus been occupied for a few minutes, my look once more turned
to the mountain, where a surprise awaited me: the summit was now
encircled with little points of radiance, as though a starry diadem
had fallen upon it from the sky. "Pronti!" cried our driver. I
climbed to my seat, and we began our journey towards the crowning
lights.
By help of long loops the road ascended at a tolerably easy angle;
the horse-bells tinkled, the driver shouted encouragement to his
beasts, and within the vehicle went on a lively gossiping, with much
laughter. Meanwhile the great moon had risen high enough to illumine
the valley below us; silvery grey and green, the lovely hollow
seemed of immeasurable length, and beyond it one imagined, rather
than discerned, a glimmer of the sea.
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