[By the Ionian Sea by George Gissing]@TWC D-Link bookBy the Ionian Sea CHAPTER VI 7/16
Metaponto is a railway station, that and nothing more, and, as a station also calls itself a hotel, I straightway asked for a room, and there dozed until sunshine improved my humour and stirred my appetite.
The guidebook had assured me of two things: that a vehicle could be had here for surveying the district, and that, under cover behind the station, one would find a little collection of antiquities unearthed hereabout.
On inquiry, I found that no vehicle, and no animal capable of being ridden, existed at Metaponto; also that the little museum had been transferred to Naples.
It did not pay to keep the horse, they told me; a stranger asked for it only "once in a hundred years." However, a lad was forthcoming who would guide me to the ruins. I breakfasted (the only thing tolerable being the wine), and we set forth. It was a walk of some two or three miles, by a cart road, through fields just being ploughed for grain.
All about lay a level or slightly rolling country, which in winter becomes a wilderness of mud; dry traces of vast slough and occasional stagnant pools showed what the state of things would be a couple of months hence.
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