Certain White
Spots Which I Had Discovered At The End Of The Promontory Were
Little Villas, Occupied In Summer By The Well-To-Do Citizens Of
Cotrone; The Doctor Himself Owned One, Which Had Belonged To His
Father Before Him.
Some of the earliest memories of his boyhood were
connected with the Cape:
When he had lessons to learn by heart, he
often used to recite them walking round and round the great column.
In the garden of his villa he at times amused himself with digging,
and a very few turns of the spade sufficed to throw out some relic
of antiquity. Certain Americans, he said, obtained permission not
long ago from the proprietor of the ground on which the temple stood
to make serious excavations, but as soon as the Italians heard of
it, they claimed the site as a national monument; the work was
forbidden, and the soil had to be returned to its former state. Hard
by the ancient sanctuary is a chapel, consecrated to the Madonna del
Capo; thither the people of Cotrone make pilgrimages, and hold upon
the Cape a rude festival, which often ends in orgiastic riot.
All the surface of the promontory is bare; not a tree, not a bush,
save for a little wooded hollow called Fossa del Lupo - the wolf's
den. There, says legend, armed folk of Cotrone used to lie in wait
to attack the corsairs who occasionally landed for water.
When I led him to talk of Cotrone and its people, the Doctor could
but confirm my observations.
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