CATANZARO For half an hour the train slowly ascends.

The carriages are of special construction, light and many-windowed, so that one has good views of the landscape.

Very beautiful was this long, broad, climbing valley, everywhere richly wooded; oranges and olives, carob and lentisk and myrtle, interspersed with cactus (its fruit, the prickly fig, all gathered) and with the sword-like agave.

Glow of sunset lingered upon the hills: in the green hollow a golden twilight faded to dusk.

The valley narrowed; it became a gorge between dark slopes which closed together and seemed to bar advance.