, either then or at any moment during the rest of the
day, but the voice was so reassuring that I gladly gave ear to it. On
we drove, down the lovely vale of the Corace, through orange-groves and
pine-woods, laurels and myrtles, carobs and olive trees, with the rain
beating fiercely upon us, the wind swaying all the leafage like billows
on a stormy sea. At the Marina of Catanzaro we turned southward on the
coast road, pursued it for two or three miles, then branched upon our
inland way. The storm showed no sign of coming to an end. Several times
the carriage stopped, and the lad got down to examine his
horses--perhaps to sympathize with them; he was such a drenched,
battered, pitiable object that I reproached myself for allowing him to
pursue the journey.

"_Brutto tempo_!" he screamed above the uproar, when I again spoke to
him; but in such a cheery tone that I did not think it worth while to
make any further remark.

Through the driving rain, I studied as well as I could the features of
the country. On my left hand stretched a long fiat-topped mountain,
forming the southern slope of the valley we ascended; steep, dark, and
furrowed with innumerable torrent-beds, it frowned upon a river that
rushed along the ravine at its foot to pour into the sea where the
mountain broke as a rugged cliff. This was the Mons Moscius of old
time, which sheltered the monastery built by Cassiodorus. The headlong,
swollen flood, coloured like yellow clay, held little resemblance to
the picture I had made of that river Pellena which murmurs so musically
in the old writer's pages. Its valley was heaped with great blocks of
granite--a feature which has interest for the geologist; it marks an
abrupt change of system, from the soft stone of Catanzaro (which ends
the Apennine) to the granitic mass of Aspromonte (the toe of Italy)
which must have risen above the waters long before the Apennines came
into existence. The wild weather emphasized a natural difference
between this valley of Squillace and that which rises towards
Catanzaro; here is but scanty vegetation, little more than thin
orchards of olive, and the landscape has a bare, harsh character. Is it
changed so greatly since the sixth century of our era? Or did its
beauty lie in the eyes of Cassiodorus, who throughout his long life of
statesmanship in the north never forgot this Bruttian home, and who
sought peace at last amid the scenes of his childhood?

At windings of the way I frequ