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
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
