ad. 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
the carriage, the driver walking just in front of me; and something
then happened which is still a puzzle when I recall it. Whether the
thought of crimes had made the man nervous, or whether just then I wore
a peculiarly truculent face, or had made some alarming gesture, all of
a sudden he turned upon me, grasped my arm and asked sharply: "What
have you got in your hand?" I had a bit of fern, plucked a few minutes
before, and with surprise I showed it; whereupon he murmured an
apology, said something about making haste, and jumped to his seat. An
odd little incident.

At an unexpected turn of the road there spread before me a vast
prospect; I looked down upon inland Calabria. It was a valley broad
enough to be called a plain, dotted with white villages, and backed by
the mass of mountains which now, as in old time, bear the name of Great
Sila. Through this landscape flowed the river Crati--the ancient
Crathis; northward it curved, and eastward, to fall at length into the
Ionian Sea, far beyond my vision. The river Crathis, which flowed by
the walls of Sybaris. I stopped the horses to gaze and wonder; gladly I
would have stood there for hours. Less interested, and impatient to get
on, the driver pointed out to me the direction of Cosenza, still at a
great distance. He added the information that, in summer, the
well-to-do folk of Cosenza go to Paola for sea-bathing, and that they
always perform the journey by night. I, listening carelessly amid my
dream, tried to imagine the crossing of those Calabrian hills under a
summer sun! By summer moonlight it must be wonderful.

We descended at a sharp pace, all the way through a forest of
chestnuts, the fruit already gathered, the go