e
the sea-coast population of Calabria inland and to the heights. Our own
day beholds a counter movement; the shore line of railway will create
new towns on the old deserted sites. Such a settlement is the Marina of
Catanzaro, a little port at the mouth of a wide valley, along which
runs a line to Catanzaro itself, or rather to the foot of the great
hill on which the town is situated. The sun was setting when I alighted
at the Marina, and as I waited for the branch train my eyes feasted
upon a glory of colour which made me forget aching weariness. All
around lay orchards of orange trees, the finest I had ever seen, and
over their solid masses of dark foliage, thick hung with ripening
fruit, poured the splendour of the western sky. It was a picture
unsurpassable in richness of tone; the dense leafage of deepest,
warmest green glowed and flashed, its magnificence heightened by the
blaze of the countless golden spheres adorning it. Beyond, the magic
sea, purple and crimson as the sun descended upon the vanishing
horizon. Eastward, above the slopes of Sila, stood a moon almost at its
full, the yellow of an autumn leaf, on a sky soft-flushed with rose.

In my geography it is written that between Catanzaro and the sea lie
the gardens of the Hesperides.

CHAPTER XII

CATANZARO

For half an hour the train slowly ascends. The carriages are of special
construction, light and many-windowed, so that one has good views of
the landscape. Very beautiful was this long, broad, climbing valley,
everywhere richly wooded; oranges and olives, carob and lentisk and
myrtle, interspersed with cactus (its fruit, the prickly fig, all
gathered) and with the sword-like agave. Glow of sunset lingered upon
the hills: in the green hollow a golden twilight faded to dusk. The
valley narrowed; it became a gorge between dark slopes which closed
together and seemed to bar advance. Here the train stopped, and all the
passengers (some half-dozen) alighted.

The sky was still clear enough to show the broad features of the scene
before me. I looked up to a mountain side, so steep that towards the
summit it appeared precipitous, and there upon the height, dimly
illumined with a last reflex of after-glow, my eyes distinguished
something which might be the outline of walls and houses. This, I knew,
was the situation of Catanzaro, but one could not easily imagine by
what sort of approach the city would be gained; in the thickening
twilight, no trac