Americans, he said, obtained permission not long ago from the proprietor of the ground on which the temple stood to make serious excavations, but as soon as the Italians heard of it, they claimed the site as a national monument; the work was forbidden, and the soil had to be returned to its former state.  Hard by the ancient sanctuary is a chapel, consecrated to the Madonna del Capo; thither the people of Cotrone make pilgrimages, and hold upon the Cape a rude festival, which often ends in orgiastic riot.

All the surface of the promontory is bare; not a tree, not a bush, save for a little wooded hollow called Fossa del Lupo—­the wolf’s den.  There, says legend, armed folk of Cotrone used to lie in wait to attack the corsairs who occasionally landed for water.

When I led him to talk of Cotrone and its people, the Doctor could but confirm my observations.  He contrasted the present with the past; this fever-stricken and waterless village with the great city which was called the healthiest in the world.  In his opinion the physical change had resulted from the destruction of forests, which brought with it a diminution of the rainfall.  “At Cotrone,” he said, “we have practically no rain.  A shower now and then, but never a wholesome downpour.”  He had no doubt that, in ancient times, all the hills of the coast were wooded, as Sila still is, and all the rivers abundantly supplied with water.  To-day there was scarce a healthy man in Cotrone:  no one had strength to resist a serious illness.  This state of things he took very philosophically; I noticed once more the frankly mediaeval spirit in which he regarded the populace.  Talking on, he interested me by enlarging upon the difference between southern Italians and those of the north.  Beyond Rome a Calabrian never cared to go; he found himself in a foreign country, where his tongue betrayed him, and where his manners were too noticeably at variance with those prevailing.  Italian unity, I am sure, meant little to the good Doctor, and appealed but coldly to his imagination.

I declared to him at length that I could endure no longer this dreary life of the sick-room; I must get into the open air, and, if no harm came of the experiment, I should leave for Catanzaro.  “I cannot prevent you,” was the Doctor’s reply, “but I am obliged to point out that you act on your own responsibility.  It is pericoloso, it is pericolosissimo!  The terrible climate of the mountains!” However, I won his permission to leave the house, and acted upon it that same afternoon.  Shaking and palpitating, I slowly descended the stairs to the colonnade; then, with a step like that of an old, old man, tottered across the piazza, my object being to reach the chemist’s shop, where I wished to pay for the drugs that I had had and for the tea.  When I entered, sweat was streaming from my forehead; I dropped into a chair, and for a minute or two could do nothing but recover nerve and breath.  Never