One of the streets in this dilapidated stronghold bears to this day the inscription “Giudea,” or Jewry. Southern Italy was well stocked with those Hebrews concerning whom Mr. H. M. Adler has sagely discoursed. They lived in separate districts, and seem to have borne a good reputation. Those of Castrovillari, on being ejected by Ferdinand the Catholic in 1511, obligingly made a donation of their school to the town. But they returned anon, and claimed it again. Persecuted as they were, they never suffered the martyrdom of the ill-starred Waldensian colonies in Calabria.
The houses of this Jewry overlook the Coscile river, the Sybaris of old, and from a spot in the quarter a steep path descends to its banks. Here you will find yourself in another climate, cool and moist. The livid waters tumble gleefully towards the plain, amid penurious plots of beans and tomatoes, and a fierce tangle of vegetation wherever the hand of man has not made clearings. Then, mounting aloft once more, you will do well to visit the far-famed chapel that sits at the apex of the promontory, Santa Maria del Castello. There is a little platform where you may repose and enjoy the view, as I have done for some evenings past—letting the eye roam up-country towards Dolcedorme and its sister peaks, and westwards over the undulating Sila lands whose highest point, Botte Donato, is unmistakable even at this distance of forty miles, from its peculiar shape.
The Madonna picture preserved within the sanctuary has performed so many miracles in ages past that I despair of giving any account of them. It is high time, none the less, for a new sign from Heaven. Shattered by earthquakes, the chapel is in a disruptured and even menacing condition. Will some returned emigrant from America come forward with the necessary funds? That would be a miracle, too, in its way. But gone, for the present, are the ages of Faith—the days when the peevishly-protestant J. H. Bartels sojourned here and groaned as he counted up the seven monasteries of Castrovillari (there used to be nearly twice that number), and viewed the 130 priests, “fat-paunched rascals, loafing about the streets and doorways.” . . .
From my window in the hotel I espy a small patch of snow on the hills. I know the place; it is the so-called “Montagna del Principe” past which the track winds into the Pollino regions. Thither I am bound; but so complicated is life that even for a short three days’ ramble among those forests a certain amount of food and clothing must be provided—a mule is plainly required. There seem to be none of these beasts available at Castrovillari.