When he had said good-bye he turned to look after me with
a mischievous smile, as much as to say that I had naturally refused
to talk to him about so important a matter as the building of a
church, but he was not to be deceived.
The common type of face at Cotrone is coarse and bumpkinish; ruder,
it seemed to me, than faces seen at any point of my journey
hitherto. A photographer had hung out a lot of portraits, and it was
a hideous exhibition; some of the visages attained an incredible
degree of vulgar ugliness. This in the town which still bears the
name of Croton. The people are all more or less unhealthy; one meets
peasants horribly disfigured with life-long malaria. There is an
agreeable cordiality in the middle classes; business men from whom I
sought casual information, even if we only exchanged a few words in
the street, shook hands with me at parting. I found no one who had
much good to say of his native place; every one complained of a lack
of water. Indeed, Cotrone has as good as no water supply. One or two
wells I saw, jealously guarded: the water they yield is not really
fit for drinking, and people who can afford it purchase water which
comes from a distance in earthenware jars.
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