Scale 1 : 250,000.

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VI.—SOUTHERN ITALY, NAPLES.

Amongst the various states which have been welded into the modern kingdom of Italy, Naples, though second to others in population and industry, occupies the largest area.[100] It embraces the whole southern half of the peninsula, and its coast has a development of 995 miles. Formerly the country was better known than any other portion of Italy as Magna Græcia, but now many parts of it are scarcely known at all.

The Apennines of Naples can hardly be described as a mountain chain. They consist rather of distinct mountain groups joined by transverse ranges, or by elevated saddles. In the first of these groups the serrated crest of the Meta (7,364 feet) rises above the zone of trees, and is separated from the Abruzzos by the deep valley of the Sangro, which flows to the Adriatic. Farther to the south, beyond the valley of Isernia, which gives birth to the Volturno, rise the mountains of the Matese, culminating in the Miletto (6,717 feet), the last bulwark of the Samnites. Other summits, less elevated, but equally steep and imposing, rise near Benevento and Avellino. They abound in savage defiles, in which many a bloody battle has been fought. The valley of the “Furcæ Caudinæ,” where the Romans humbled themselves before the Samnites, and made promises which they never meant to keep, may still be recognised on the road from Naples to Benevento. The memory of this event lives in the Caudarola Road, and the village of Forchia d’Arpaia. This mountain region, which might fitly be called after its ancient inhabitants, is connected in the south with a transversal chain, running east and west, and terminating in Cape Campanello, to the south of the Bay of Naples. The beautiful island of Capri, with its white cliffs and caverns flooded by the azure waters of the Me­di­ter­ra­nean, lies off this cape.

The eastern slope of the cretaceous mountains of Naples is gentle, and gradually merges in argillaceous tavolieri, or table-lands, deposited during the Pliocene epoch. The tavoliere de la Puglia is, perhaps, the most sterile and dreary portion of Italy. It is cut up into terraces by deep ravines, through which insignificant streams find their way to the Adriatic, and the centres of population must be looked for at the mouths of valleys or along the high-roads. The country itself is a vast solitude, deserted by all except nomad herdsmen. There are no shrubs, and a kind of fennel, which forms the hedges separating the pasturing grounds, is the largest plant to be seen. Hovels, resembling tombs or heaps of stone, rise here and there in the midst of these plains. Fortunately the old feudal customs which prevented the cultivation of these plains, and compelled the mountaineers to keep open wide paths, or tratturi, through their fields for the passage of sheep, have been abolished, and the aspect of the tavoliere improves from year to year.

These tavolieri completely separate the mountains of the peninsula of Gargano—the “spur” of the Italian “boot”—from the system of the Apennines. The northern slopes of these rugged mountains are still clad with forests of beeches {287} and pines, which supply the best pitch of Italy, and by thickets of carob-trees and other plants, whose flowers are transformed by the bees into delicious honey; but the very name of the most elevated summit—Monte Calvo (5,150 feet), or “bald mountain”—proves that the deplorable destruction of forests has been going on here as in the rest of the peninsula. In former times the recesses of Monte Gargano were held by Saracen pirates, and they defied the Christians there for a long time, in spite of the many sanctuaries which had been substituted for the ancient heathen temples. The most famous of these was the church on Monte Sant’ Angelo, at the back of Manfredonia, which was frequently resorted to by the navigator about to leave the shelter of the bay for the dangerous coasts of Dalmatia or the open sea.

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Fig. 105.—MONTE GARGANO.