VILLAGE OF THE DEAD.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 19968, 7 June 1920, Page 10

VILLAGE OF THE DEAD.

V ■ A RIVIERA TRAGEDY. DESERTED FOR THIRTY YEARS, ■Beyond douhfc Bushina .Vecchia—Old pussana--is one of tlio.beautif.nl and tragic sights -of the world, writes a correspondent in- “ The Times.'’ It was nerer much more than a village, with, perhaps, some 1500 inhabitants, even before _ the catastrophe of 1387 which . maclo it what it is to-day. Eastward Irani San Remo. just beyond Capo Tcrdo, it lies about two miles inland tram the sea coast, where, starting from New Bussana. a, typical stone-paved nuilo path leads you to d. You will not sec the village until, perhaps, a third of. the journey is done, then suddenly it breaks on you. Greywhif.o, clear-cut, and glistening in the 'sun,; dominated, like all these villages, by its white church tower, it crowns tno hill whose elopes are clad in the i;rev of olive groves, and stands boldly against the blue, with a, distant background of timbered mountain ranges. •Many of these.old hili-tpp villages are ra-r lovely—Sasso,. Scboarga,~ Perimaldo, Dolcoaequa—but none, whether in its composition (in themrlisfa sense) or m its site, is: more impressive than Bur-sana. For .centuries this mule path, with us worn stones, must have been a busy highway. Now the weeds cu-n-each upon it. and throughout as eugth you are likely to see no sign of lite except' the lizards that scuttle, in ihe Min, the butterflies flitting over the thicks of rosemary, on cither side, and, 10 may be. n kestrel swinging high übinc tho valley. As von approach, 'on sea the village is not as other vil--r S ’ it stands and clean in n if’ lnl ' "‘indows ore unnaturally black and large; and, as you draw to it. there is no sound of voices, no movement of traffic, no tumult of children playing. All is as still and silent as Ihe lulls and the sunshine. The muie path swings and passes between the high house walls into the cold shadow of the narrow street; and it is a. street of the dead in a village which is one great cenotaph. DISASTROUS EARTHQUAKE. . It was on Ash "Wednesday, February 18S». that the earthquake t6ok plaeo The villagers were nearly all at .•-ass, mostly irt the larger church '.there is a smaller and older one lower down), whose tower still dominates the place. Even as they knelt the”shook' straining each wall and joint and timber in. every building in the village. But of them all it war, the church, with us wide span of roof, that was least luted to stand the ordeal, and with, one crash the whole groat roof, from wall to'wall, fell in. They took out over sixty dead, and’ twice as many more were mangled or oaaly hurt. Those- of the inhabitants who escaped fled from the village and' ; have never returned to live in it. The.' new Buasana, straggling and modern, was hunt down there bv the coast; and the beautiful old place upon hilltop remains tenantless and. thevi say, haunted and accursed, so that thepeasants visit it as seldom as no--' side. ‘ ' j A WHOLENESS THAI IS IMPRESSIVE. ! }'o have-all .become, connoisseurs ot; ■ Mins in these hist few years, and if you;ask: me how much Bussana : ’as a whole injured, I say /.hardly at all. There Ly less viable evidence of destruction—)/Wi actual .rending of fahric—than tfuu: German bombs wrought in a week in Sbu V 01 ' Afre. If. bears no comparison! 1 with, for example, Arras or Albert. 1 And it is this apparent wholeness whichi! makes it ; u infinitely impressive. A.;’ thousand could, - with a- little. :; sweeping out. find lodgment' hero to-'j-morrow. The houses seem, to bo bmijl awaiting I heir return. But they havallwaited so for thirty years, and ‘an al-fp most intolerable sense of suspense hangs! in the air. and the silence is a thing; , well nigh tangible. • ■ ; In the narrow, sunless streets.fhcrs'y is littde debris of masonry;- but nr places they are choked with .brambles m ami the vile] 9nun and fumitory have'; sprung up ■ -between ■ the?, sroncs. Against: just-such catastrophes.’ as; that of 1887, all these high villages are built vith extreme soliditv, with stem© walls two feed and three' feet thick. heavy vaulted ceilings.. and concrete floor?., the narrow streets knit everywhere with so-called earthquake arches, and the entire village welded, like a, wasp s nest, into a single whole, ■ n for-bc-:.s against the attacks of man,and , Nat ure. And. for all that cracks are I I risible, ihe fabric as a whole was equal to me'lcrrible drain'. DESERTED HABITABLE HOMES, No doors -or..window casings-or woodwork <;f- i>ny.rkind remain.: butfor-the rest, m street ;atter -street,, you may go .into every .house, climb' the.umujured stvono staircases from floor to floor aii.l outer every room. Houses, even here, cannot lie untenaiited for thirty years and suffer no decay; but in tiiu: l clean, drv mountain air' nothing soils, j and no mould grows. ivo the interiors) of most of the rooms ure as if newlyq white-washed. The plaster mouldings in frieze ami plaster remain .in miniy eases perfect, and flic colours of pointings on the walls are still brilliant. Hardly a building in all the down but Inis its roof yet intact—except the church. Here, in the dread central scene of the catastrophe, is the most moving sight, of all Rootless, of course, the church is open to the day,’ In the work cf rescue all 1 lie fallen wreckage was cleared away, ami to-day there is less debris on the floor, where the base of the high altar with its white 'marble fUik-reJicVs still stands, than , I bare seen in nfty churches m Franco and Belgium after the German guns 'had been at work. Though all the roof of Hu--, nave has gone, the ceiling of tho apse remains intact and the colours of tho Jveseooa. are still vivid. g 0 with mmE or the painting on the walls of the side chapels and the gay blues and Pinks and greens of ,tko mural decorations. Tall rohmins run up the walls down the full length -of the nave, their Corinthian capitals touched with gilt, glittering still and garish in the sun; a.net above (hem, along a cornice, are carver] figures'of cherubs, singly and in couples. As the roof crashed in some stone.-; struck them, so that one is armies;, and another has lost its legs, but ■all, with the bright sun beating o n thenv aro happy, and they look down dauglung on tho ruins helow. Even so they must have laughed m the moment of agony, when all this open floor was covered from wall to wall with ccrn-ned' and mangled human beings, who screamed and struggled till life died out. under the heaped stones. ( i ■ . '