on this side of the Alps, nor yet in the Alps themselves; nothing of the
kind nearer than Russia. But the Russian jungles, apart from their
monotony of timber, foster feelings of sadness and gloom, whereas these
southern ones, as Hehn has well observed, are full of a luminous
beauty--their darkest recesses being enlivened by a sense of benignant
mystery. Gariglione was at that time a virgin forest, untouched by the
hand of man; a dusky ridge, visible from afar; an impenetrable tangle of
forest trees, chiefest among them being the "garigli" _(Quercus cerris)_
whence it derives its name, as well as thousands of pines and bearded
firs and all that hoary indigenous vegetation struggling out of the
moist soil wherein their progenitors had lain decaying time out of mind.
In these solitudes, if anywhere, one might still have found the
absent-minded luzard (lynx) of the veracious historian; or that squirrel
whose "calabrere" fur, I strongly suspect, came from Russia; or, at any
rate, the Mushroom-stone _which shineth in the night_. [Footnote: As a
matter of fact, the mushroom-stone is a well-known commodity, being
still collected and eaten, for example, at Santo Stefano in Aspramente.
Older travellers tell us that it used to be exported to Naples and kept
in the cellars of the best houses for the enjoyment of its
fruit--sometimes in lumps measuring two feet in diameter which, being
soaked in water, produced these edible fungi. A stone yielding food--a
miracle! It is a porous tufa adapted, presumably, for sheltering and
fecundating vegetable spores. A little pamphlet by Professor A. Trotter
("Flora Montana della Calabria") gives some idea of the local plants and
contains a useful bibliography. A curious feature is the relative
abundance of boreal and Balkan-Oriental forms; another, the rapid spread
of _Genista anglica,_ which is probably an importation.]

Well, I am glad my path to-day did not lead me to Gariglione, and so
destroy old memories of the place. For the domain, they tell me, has