They led me, at Grottaglie, to the only convent of males now in use, SanFrancesco, recently acquired by the Jesuits. In the sacristy of its church,where I was told to wait, a slender young priest was praying rapturously beforesome image, and the clock that stood at hand recorded the flight of twentyminutes ere his devotions were ended. Then he arose slowly and turned upon me apair of lustrous, dreamy eyes, as though awakened from another world.
Bob Acri Discografia Torrent
We retired early. But long after the rest of them were snoring hard I continuedawake, shivering under my blanket and choking with the acrid smoke of a fire ofgreen timber. The door had been left ajar to allow it to escape, but the onlyresult of this arrangement was that a glacial blast of wind swept into thechamber from outside. The night was bitterly cold, and the wooden floor onwhich I was reposing seemed to be harder than the majority of its kind. Ithought with regret of the tepid nights of Taranto and Castrovillari, andcursed my folly for climbing into these Arctic regions; wondering, as I haveoften done, what demon of restlessness or perversity drives one to undertakesuch insane excursions.
They need not alarm themselves. For Acri, as Forbiger has shown, is the oldAcherontia; the river Acheron, the Mocone or Mucone of to-day, flows at itsfoot, and from one point of the town I had a fine view into its raging torrent.
For a short while we stumbled along a torrent-bed, and I grew rather sad tothink that it might be the last I should see for some time to come, my days inthis country being now numbered. This one was narrow. But there are others,interminable in length and breadth. Interminable! No breeze stirs in those deepdepressions through which the merest thread of milky water tricklesdisconsolately. The sun blazes overhead and hours pass, while you trudgethrough the fiery inferno; scintillations of heat rise from the stones andstill you crawl onwards, breathless and footsore, till eyes are dazed andsenses reel. One may well say bad things of these torrid deserts of pebbleswhich, up till lately, were the only highways from the lowlands into themountainous parts. But they are sweet in memory. One calls to mind the wildsavours that hang inthe stagnant air; the cloven hill-sides, seamed with gorgeous patches of russetand purple and green; the spectral tamarisks, and the glory of coral-tintedoleanders rising in solitary tufts of beauty, or flaming congregations, out ofthe pallid waste of boulders.
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