By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy

appeared that I had been told the truth. Clearly, if I wished to

proceed at once, I must open negotiations at my inn, and, after a

leisurely meal, I did so. Very soon a man presented himself who was

willing to drive me over the mountains—at a charge which I saw to be

absurd; the twinkle in his eye as he named the sum sufficiently

enlightened me. By the book it was no more than a journey of four

hours; my driver declared that it would take from seven to eight. After

a little discussion he accepted half the original demand, and went off

very cheerfully to put in his horses.

For an hour I rambled about the town’s one street, very picturesque and

rich in colour, with rushing fountains where women drew fair water in

jugs and jars of antique beauty. Whilst I was thus loitering in the

sunshine, two well-dressed men approached me, and with somewhat

excessive courtesy began conversation. They understood that I was about

to drive to Cosenza. A delightful day, and a magnificent country! They

too thought of journeying to Cosenza, and, in short, would I allow them

to share my carriage? Now this was annoying; I much preferred to be

alone with my thoughts; but it seemed ungracious to refuse. After a

glance at their smiling faces, I answered that whatever room remained

in the vehicle was at their service—on the natural understanding that

they shared the expense; and to this, with the best grace in the world,

they at once agreed. We took momentary leave of each other, with much

bowing and flourishing of hats, and the amusing thing was that I never

beheld those gentlemen again.

Fortunately—as the carriage proved to be a very small one, and the sun

was getting very hot; with two companions I should have had an

uncomfortable day. In front of the Leone a considerable number of

loafers had assembled to see me off, and of these some half-dozen were

persevering mendicants. It disappointed me that I saw no interesting

costume; all wore the common, colourless garb of our destroying age.

The only vivid memory of these people which remains with me is the

cadence of their speech. Whilst I was breakfasting, two women stood at

gossip on a near balcony, and their utterance was a curious

exaggeration of the Neapolitan accent; every sentence rose to a high

note, and fell away in a long curve of sound, sometimes a musical wail,

more often a mere whining. The protraction of the last word or two was

really astonishing; again and again I fancied that the speaker had

broken into song. I cannot say that the effect was altogether pleasant;

in the end such talk would tell severely on civilized nerves, but it

harmonized with the coloured houses, the luxuriant vegetation, the

strange odours, the romantic landscape.

In front of the vehicle were three little horses; behind it was hitched

an old shabby two-wheeled thing, which we were to leave somewhere for

repairs. With whip-cracking and vociferation, amid good-natured

farewells from the crowd, we started away. It was just ten o’clock.

At once the road began to climb, and nearly three hours were spent in

reaching the highest point of the mountain barrier. Incessantly

winding, often doubling upon itself, the road crept up the sides of

profound gorges, and skirted many a precipice; bridges innumerable

spanned the dry ravines which at another season are filled with furious

torrents. From the zone of orange and olive and cactus we passed that

of beech and oak, noble trees now shedding their rich-hued foliage on

bracken crisped and brown; here I noticed the feathery bowers of wild

clematis (“old man’s beard”), and many a spike of the great mullein,

strange to me because so familiar in English lanes. Through mists that

floated far below I looked over miles of shore, and outward to the

ever-rising limit of sea and sky. Very lovely were the effects of

light, the gradations of colour; from the blue-black abysses, where no

shape could be distinguished, to those violet hues upon the furrowed

heights which had a transparency, a softness, an indefiniteness, unlike

anything to be seen in northern landscape.

The driver was accompanied by a half-naked lad, who, at certain points,

suddenly disappeared, and came into view again after a few minutes,

having made a short cut up some rugged footway between the loops of the

road. Perspiring, even as I sat, in the blaze of the sun, I envied the

boy his breath and muscle. Now and then he slaked his thirst at a stone

fountain by the wayside, not without reverencing the blue-hooded

Madonna painted over it. A few lean, brown peasants, bending under

faggots, and one or two carts, passed us before we gained the top, and

half-way up there was a hovel where drink could be bought; but with

these exceptions nothing broke the loneliness of the long, wild ascent.

My man was not talkative, but answered inquiries civilly; only on one

subject was he very curt—that of the two wooden crosses which we

passed just before arriving at the summit; they meant murders. At the

moment when I spoke of them I was stretching my legs in a walk beside