Although the old wolves are shot and killed by spring guns and dynamite while the young ones are caught alive in steel traps and other appliances, their numbers are still formidable enough to perturb the pastoral folks. One is therefore surprised to see what a poor breed of dogs they keep; scraggy mongrels that run for their lives at the mere sight of a wolf who can, and often does, bite them into two pieces with one snap of his jaws. They tell me that there is a government reward for every wolf killed, but it is seldom paid; whoever has the good fortune to slay one of these beasts, carries the skin as proof of his prowess from door to door, and receives a small present everywhere—half a franc, or a cheese, or a glass of wine.
The goats show fight, and therefore the wolf prefers sheep. Shepherds have told me that he comes up to them _delicatamente,_ and then, fixing his teeth in the wool of their necks, pulls them onward, caressing their sides with his tail. The sheep are fascinated with his gentle manners, and generally allow themselves to be led up to the spot he has selected for their execution; the truth being that he is too lazy to carry them, if he can possibly avoid it. He will promptly kill his quarry and carry its carcase downhill on the rare occasions when the flocks are grazing above his haunt; but if it is an uphill walk, they must be good enough to use their own legs. Incredible stories of his destructiveness are related.
Fortunately, human beings are seldom attacked, a dog or a pig being generally forthcoming when the usual prey is not to be found. Yet not long ago a sad affair occurred; a she-wolf attacked a small boy before the eyes of his parents, who pursued him, powerless to help—the head and arms had already been torn off before a shot from a neighbour despatched the monster. Truly, “a great family displeasure,” as my informant styled it. Milo of Croton, the famous athlete, is the most renowned victim of these Sila wolves. Tradition has it that, relying on his great strength, he tried to rend asunder a mighty log of wood which closed, however, and caught his arms in its grip; thus helpless, he was devoured alive by them.
By keeping to the left of Circilla, I might have skirted the forest of Gariglione. This tract lies at about four and a half hours’ distance from San Giovanni; I found it, some years ago, to be a region of real “Urwald” or primary jungle; there was nothing like it, to my knowledge, 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_.[2]