be sure he could admit me to see his own orchard; but why did I wish to see it?  My reply that I had no interest save in the natural beauty of the place did not convince him; he saw in me a speculator of some kind.  That was natural enough.  In all the south of Italy, money is the one subject of men’s thoughts; intellectual life does not exist; there is little even of what we should call common education.  Those who have wealth cling to it fiercely; the majority have neither time nor inclination to occupy themselves with anything but the earning of a livelihood which for multitudes signifies the bare appeasing of hunger.

Seeing the Sindaco’s embarrassment, his portly friend began to question me; good-humouredly enough, but in such a fat bubbling voice (made more indistinct by the cigar he kept in his mouth) that with difficulty I understood him.  What was I doing at Cotrone?  I endeavoured to explain that Cotrone greatly interested me.  Ha!  Cotrone interested me?  Really?  Now what did I find interesting at Cotrone?  I spoke of historic associations.  The Sindaco and his friend exchanged glances, smiled in a puzzled, tolerant, half-pitying way, and decided that my request might be granted.  In another minute I withdrew, carrying half a sheet of note-paper on which were scrawled in pencil a few words, followed by the proud signature “Berlinghieri.”  When I had deciphered the scrawl, I found it was an injunction to allow me to view a certain estate “senza nulla toccare”—­without touching anything.  So a doubt still lingered in the dignitary’s mind.

Cotrone has no vehicle plying for hire—­save that in which I arrived at the hotel.  I had to walk in search of the orange orchard, all along the straight dusty road leading to the station.  For a considerable distance this road is bordered on both sides by warehouses of singular appearance.  They have only a ground floor, and the front wall is not more than ten feet high, but their low roofs, sloping to the ridge at an angle of about thirty degrees, cover a great space.  The windows are strongly barred, and the doors show immense padlocks of elaborate construction.  The goods warehoused here are chiefly wine and oil, oranges and liquorice. (A great deal of liquorice grows around the southern gulf.) At certain moments, indicated by the markets at home or abroad, these stores are conveyed to the harbour, and shipped away.  For the greater part of the year the houses stand as I saw them, locked, barred, and forsaken:  a street where any sign of life is exceptional; an odd suggestion of the English Sunday in a land that knows not such observance.

Crossing the Esaro, I lingered on the bridge to gaze at its green, muddy water, not visibly flowing at all.  The high reeds which half concealed it carried my thoughts back to the Galaesus.  But the comparison is all in favour of the Tarentine stream.  Here one could feel nothing but a comfortless melancholy; the scene is too squalid, the degradation too complete.