At one of the wayside stations entered a traveller whom I could not but regard with astonishment.  He was a man at once plump and muscular, his sturdy limbs well exhibited in a shooting costume.  On his face glowed the richest hue of health; his eyes glistened merrily.  With him he carried a basket, which, as soon as he was settled, gave forth an abundant meal.  The gusto of his eating, the satisfaction with which he eyed his glasses of red wine, excited my appetite.  But who was he?  Not, I could see, a tourist; yet how account for this health and vigour in a native of the district?  I had not seen such a man since I set out upon my travels; the contrast he made with the figures of late familiar to me was so startling that I had much ado to avoid continuously gazing at him.  His proximity did me good; the man radiated health.

When next the train stopped he exchanged words with some one on the platform, and I heard that he was going to Catanzaro.  At once I understood.  This jovial, ruddy-cheeked personage was a man of the hills.  At Catanzaro I should see others like him; perhaps he fairly represented its inhabitants.  If so, I had reason for my suspicion that poor fever-stricken Cotrone regarded with a sort of jealousy the breezy health of Catanzaro, which at the same time is a much more prosperous place.  Later, I found that there did exist some acerbity of mutual criticism between the two towns, reminding one of civic rivalry among the Greeks.  Catanzaro spoke with contempt of Cotrone.  Happily I made no medical acquaintance in the hill town; but I should have liked to discuss with one of these gentlemen the view of their climate held by Dr. Sculco.

In the ages that followed upon the fall of Rome, perpetual danger drove 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.