abysm of time! Of course, the Tarantine never reads; the only bookshop
I could discover made a poorer display than even that at Cosenza—it
was not truly a bookseller’s at all, but a fancy stationer’s. How the
women spend their lives one may vainly conjecture. Only on Sunday did I
see a few of them about the street; they walked to and from Mass, with
eyes on the ground, and all the better-dressed of them wore black.
When the weather fell calm again, and there was pleasure in walking, I
chanced upon a trace of the old civilization which interested me more
than objects ranged in a museum. Rambling eastward along the outer
shore, in the wilderness which begins as soon as the town has
disappeared, I came to a spot as uninviting as could be imagined, great
mounds of dry rubbish, evidently deposited here by the dust-carts of
Taranto; luckily, I continued my walk beyond this obstacle, and after a
while became aware that I had entered upon a road—a short piece of
well-marked road, which began and ended in the mere waste. A moment’s
examination, and I saw that it was no modern by-way. The track was
clean-cut in living rock, its smooth, hard surface lined with two
parallel ruts nearly a foot deep; it extended for some twenty yards
without a break, and further on I discovered less perfect bits. Here,
manifestly, was the seaside approach to Tarentum, to Taras, perhaps to
the Phoenician city which came before them. Ages must have passed since
vehicles used this way; the modern high road is at some distance
inland, and one sees at a glance that this witness of ancient traffic
has remained by Time’s sufferance in a desert region. Wonderful was the
preservation of the surface: the angles at the sides, where the road
had been cut down a little below the rock-level, were sharp and clean
as if carved yesterday, and the profound ruts, worn, perhaps, before
Rome had come to her power, showed the grinding of wheels with strange
distinctness. From this point there is an admirable view of Taranto,
the sea, and the mountains behind.
Of the ancient town there remains hardly anything worthy of being
called a ruin. Near the shore, however, one can see a few remnants of a
theatre—perhaps that theatre where the Tarentines were sitting when
they saw Roman galleys, in scorn of treaty, sailing up the Gulf.
My last evenings were brightened by very beautiful sunsets; one in
particular remains with me; I watched it for an hour or more from the
terrace-road of the island town. An exquisite after-glow seemed as if
it would never pass away. Above thin, grey clouds stretching along the
horizon a purple flush melted insensibly into the dark blue of the
zenith. Eastward the sky was piled with lurid rack, sullen-tinted folds
edged with the hue of sulphur. The sea had a strange aspect, curved
tracts of pale blue lying motionless upon a dark expanse rippled by the
wind. Below me, as I leaned on the sea-wall, a fisherman’s boat crept
duskily along the rocks, a splash of oars soft-sounding in the
stillness. I looked to the far Calabrian hills, now scarce
distinguishable from horizon cloud, and wondered what chances might
await me in the unknown scenes of my further travel.
The long shore of the Ionian Sea suggested many a halting-place. Best
of all, I should have liked to swing a wallet on my shoulder and make
