BIG ITALIAN SCHEME.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20384, 12 October 1929, Page 20

BIG ITALIAN SCHEME.

[RECLAIMING THE CAMPAGNA.

NEAR THE GATES OF ROME

'DRAINING PONTINE MARSHES

Not the least part of the extraordinary charm of Rome lies in its unique setting Sn that vast, undulating plain known as the Campagna, extending for many miles around the city from Coracte in the north to the Pontine Marshes in the south; wild, desolate, silent and malaria-stricken, strewn by ancient ruins, broken by de>?p gullies and extinct craters, yet with a peculiar haunting beauty of its own and bathed in an atmosphere of mysterious light described by one writer as the colour of the air of Rome."

It was only about 30 years ago, s<i\s the Rome correspondent of the London Observer, that Italian statesmen first r.ea lised, with a shock, that in the ceiitte of a civilised country and almost at the vety gates of the capital, thousands of human beings were leading lives so wild and primitive as to approach aboriginal savagery! The permanent inhabitants of the Cantagna are comparatively few and mostly settled on the large tciuite, the modern equivalent of the dornus cultae. The bulk of the population of the Cam pagrta cotisists of nomad labourers, chiehv from the Abruzzi; peasants, shepherds, cattle-tenders, and charcoal-burners the latter especially in the Pontine Marshes ■who live in rude conical huts of straw or dried branches erected on a wooden frame, their hearth two stones embedded in :» little clay; their beds, whe-e whole families sleep promiscuously, wooden boards with straw and a few rags thrown over them; their staple food polenta, rarely varied except on feast-days.

A " Buffalo Bill " Memory

• Until a few years ago, medical assistBnce was unattainable i'ot these poor folk. Malaria patients, if not too far from Rome, would sometimes be brought in to the hospital; if distance made that impossible they struggled through as best they could or died. In some of the remote districts a priost would go out once & week to say mass in the open air, a waggon being arranged as a kind of primitive altar, and that was practically the only communication the hut-dwellers had .•with the rest of the world.

The lowest type of these nomad labourers, who do farm work and are hired under contracts not unresembliiig slavery, are called "guitti." The typical picturesque figures of the Campagna are ;the "butteri,'.' .or cowboys, bold riders and practised horse-tamers, who live all day in the saddle tending the large droves of horses, cattle and buffaloes that roam ■wild all over the plain. The tale is still told of how Buffalo Bill, when touring Italy, offered a large prize to anyone who .•would break in a colt that his own cowfcovs were unable to tame, and how the prize was won by a Roman "buttero." ;< The belated task of reclaiming the Campagna has been taken up with characteristic energy by the present Government with very satisfactory results. The first thing was to enforce the legislation already existing. Reclamation plans are drawn up and notified to landowners, who are bound to carry theni out within three ' years. The cost can be defrayed by Government loans on very easy terms—2j per cent.—the capital to be reimbursed in 45 years. • Before the war the sums thus advanced by the State amounted to 1,650,000 lire a year; to-day they are three times as much. . Villages are being built in suitable sites to group the workers together and promote market-gardening and small rural industries; to revive, in fact, under modern conditions, the admirable Papal system of domus cultae. Housing and Eoads. < Nine villages, housing 417 families, are already in existence, and on the outskirts of Rome there are several successful settlements of ex-soldiers and their families. Everything is done to promote intensive cultivation by means of drainage and scientific farming. The system of cattle-rearing' is being transformed by t housing the animals in stables for at leas' part of the year arid creatine irrigated fields.for the production of fodder on a large scale. A fruitful agency for progress lias been the construction of a network of good secondary roads to link up the great classical arteries such as Via Appia, Via Tlarnima, Via Tuscola na, etc. The Governorship of Rome provides for a number of public services in the most inaccessible areas, including schools, of which there are now 72 scattered over the Campagna, with adequate school buildings. The number of permanent workers has increased from 9360 in 1922 to 15,000 in ' 3923. The "guitti" with their straw huts should soon be things of the past. The Pontine Marshes have not been forgotten. A canal over 23 miles long and from 162 ft. to 337 ft. in width, is in process of construction in the Piscinara zone t3 carry off the river waters to the sea and free the low lands from their almost permanent state of inundation. It is calculated that in ten years' time the whole of the area of 150,000 acres will have been reclaimed and put under cultivation, linked up by good roads and dotted by ivell-built villages.