"For wheresoe'er I turn my ravished eyes, And still I seem to tread on classic ground." RIGHT glad were we to shake the dirt of Bari off our feet and escape from the univeral smell of "cicutis allium nocentius"* (garlic, herb more noxious than hemlock). The railway to Taranto passes through some beautiful country; wild expanses of copse, and pasture brilliant with flowers; over deep ravines and rocky passes, and through groves of gigantic olive trees. Troops of half-wild horses, mules, and donkeys, and dark-gray * Horace. WE APPROACH THE IONIAN SEA. 97 cattle were browsing on either side, and occasionally we passed a large white masseria (farm-house) like a fortress; or saw a town shining in the sun, crowning a distant hill. Frederick II. was perpetually recalled to our minds. He founded the town of Altamura, and began the fine cathedral there in 1220; he built the castle at Gravina whence the Orsini took one of their titles in the middle ages, and at Gioja the great Emperor often stayed for weeks, hunting and hawking. Soon the milky Ionian Sea lay at our feet, and with the evening mists visions of the mighty dead of Magna Græcia rose before our eyes. We were bound for Leucaspide, the "place of the white shields," where a phalanx of heavy-armed infantry, called the Leucaspids, who served under Pyrrhus at the battle of Asculum, are supposed to have had their camp. Leaving the train at Massafra, we were greeted with effusion by various friends of last year. Sir James Lacaita, who has transformed a ruin into a delightful residence, sent his guard, Vito Anton, to meet us, who, in honour of the "Signora," came dressed in his holiday garb, armed with a long gun and a revolver, relics of the days when brigandage was rife in these parts. It was full moon, and the D big olive and caroub trees assumed fantastic and weird shapes, while the asphodels gave out their well-remembered pungent smell as we drove along the straight white road. A solitary palm-tree rose tall against the sky, and the night birds uttered queer shrieks and cries to the accompaniment of the deep croaking of the frogs in the marshes near the sea. The loggia, or arcade, running all along the south-west front of Leucaspide, overhangs a garden full of orange trees, wallflowers, stocks, Parma violets, carnations, and roses; beyond an expanse of brilliant green corn grows under the colossal olive trees which arborists declare to be at least two thousand years old; then a belt of cultivated land across which now and then the white smoke of the rushing train reminds us that we really are in the nineteenth century; and last, a long line of dark pines fringe the gulf of Taranto. On the opposite side of the bay rise the Basilicata mountains tipped with snow; and further down to the left, dimly perceptible on a clear day, are the wild and rugged hills of Calabria. The whole country is redolent of rosemary, and in the Gravina,* or deep ravine of Leucas The gravine are a singular feature in the geological structure of this part of Apulia, deep fissures formed by some sudden convulsion of nature. LEUCASPIDE. 99 pide, the myrtle, white and pink gumcistus, lentisk, and wild pear-trees were a blaze of bloom. Troops of small black sheep with eyes like topazes graze upon thyme and other fragrant herbs among the rocks; while their shepherd, dressed in a waistcoat and trousers of goatskin, all made in one, leans against a tree or a wall and plays wild and melancholy music on a little pipe made out of a cane. Horace describes it exactly: "Tibia non, ut nunc, orichalco vincta tubæque Æmula, sed tenuis, simplexque, foramine pauco." ("The flute, not such as it is now, bound with yellow copper ore, and rivalling the trumpet in power, but slight and simple, with few holes.") About two miles from the masseria of Leucaspide is a large flat expanse, once covered with forest, now overgrown with heath; the short grass is studded with the lovely little yellow and purple Romulea columna, and various bee orchises. Gold-coloured cytisus contrasted beautifully with the soft blue-gray rosemary, and purple windflowers bent gently to the sea-breeze, as we followed the deep ruts worn in the rock by the chariot-wheels of old. The tracks lead across the high table-land and pass by a cromlech, the "Tavola del Paladino," a huge irregular slab of stone, supported by three smaller ones, half covering a tomb, seventeen feet nine inches long by six feet six inches broad, hewn out of the rock. In ancient days the Paladins spread their feasts on the "Table" to celebrate their victories over the Pagans; so at least the peasants say. Now the only living things were a quantity of beautiful little grassgreen lizards darting about in the sun, the chestnut kestrel, always to be seen in Apulia, and a lark: 66 che'n aere si spazia Prima cantando, e poi tace contenta ("That, warbling in the air, expatiates long, Massafra, six miles to the north of Leucaspide, is a very dirty and extraordinarily picturesque little town. Tradition says that the Saracens, driven out of Taranto, took possession of the rocky hill and resisted all attempts at dislodging them; thence the name, Massa-Africa (rock of the Africans); now Massafra. Certainly the people are thoroughly Arab in look and gesture and in their passion for gay colours. A deep gravina cuts the hill, on which the town stands, in two. The view from the Dante," Parads.," XX., 73. |