Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 213, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 September 1915 — Puteoli the Degenerate [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Puteoli the Degenerate

IT IS thought by some that Paul’s defective eyesight may have prevented his appreciating natural scenery. However that may have been, it seems impossible that he should not have been impressed by the splendid views that anyone sailing up the coast of Sicily through the Straits of Messina and along the south Italian shore enjoys, says Rev. Dr. Francis E. Clark in his series, “In the Footsteps of St. Paul,” in the Christian Herald. He would have seen at first smiling, vine-covered hills; and before he had gone far, glorious Etna, snowcapped for much of the year. An ever-changing panorama delights the eye until we come to Reggio, the ancient Rhegium. Alas, a pitiful sight there greets the traveler today. Messina on one side of the narrow strait and Reggio on the other were both wrecked almost beyond recognition by the disastrous earthquake of 1908. On the Messina shore one sees great rows of little wooden houses scarcely larger than henhouses. These are the portable bungalows which were transported from America, ready-made, to relieve the sufferings of the houseless and homeless people. They are still occupied, for little has been done to build up the ruined cities. The authorized version of the* thirteenth verse of the twenty-eighth chapter of Acts says in describing St Paul’s Journey after leaving Syracuse, “and from thence we fetched a compass and came to Rhegium.” An amusing story is told of an infidel who declared, misquoting Luke’s words, that now he had proved the Bible to be a lie, since “in the book of Acts it was said that they fetched a compass aboard Paul’s ship, and everybody knew that this was long before the compass was invented.” The revised Version has taken the wind out of the Inaccurate infidel’s sails, to speak nautlcally, by translating the passage in more modern phrase: “And from thence we made a circuit, and arrived at Rhegium.” Here St. Paul’s ship evidently waited for one day, perhaps to discharge some cargo, or possibly waiting for a fair wind, which soon blew, for we are told that “after one day a south wind sprang up, and on the second day we came to Puteoli,” 182 miles to the north of Rhegium. Between Scylla and Charybdis.

Shortly after leaving Reggio we pass between Scylla and Charybdis, the fabled monsters of antiquity, the rock and the whirlpool, which have been robbed of all their terrors since steam navigation came to bless the world, and to make the traveler’s burdens and dangers light. Soon after, the active volcanic mountain of Stromboli, on one of the Lipari islands, is seen, and all the way along the glorious South Italian shore reveals itself; splendid mountains rear their heads in the near distance, their sides clothed with vineyards and olive and orange orchards far up their slopes.

As we approach the Bay of Naples the scenery becomes constantly more entrancing. We see the promontory of Sorrento acrostTthe Bay of Salerno, and soon Capri with its blue grotto comes in sight on the left, and towering Vesuvius with its constant plume of smoke on the right Sailing across the Bay of Naples, past the spot where the notable city of the present day is situated, a place which was then comparatively insignificant our travelers came to Puteoli, or Pozzuoli, as it is now called, at present a decadent suburb of Naples.

This miserable and dirty town of some 16,000 inhabitants, as it now is, is connected by trolley and steam railway with Naples, and is often visited by the modern -tourist who wishes to see the remains of the ancient temples and amphitheater and the mighty mole, which still tell of the ancient glories of Puteoli. Nearby, too, is the volcanic field of Solfatara, not a mountain, but a flat plain, the crater of a low volcano, into which one can thrust his cane in many places and find smoke and sulphurous vapor issuing from the hole as he withdraws it. Probably there are few more dreary or disreputable places in Italy than this modern suburb of Naples. It has not the ragged picturesqueness which somewhat redeems the worst slums of Naples, but is a squalid, unwholesome town of the worst type. Was Noted Roman Resort. It is difficult to realize that it once might have been called “the Liverpool of Italy,” that here was the Lucrine lake, which supplied the pampered Romans with their famous oysters, *nd that the whole bay was

covered with the beautiful yachts of the fashionable folk who made Baiae, Just beyond, the most noted resort, as corrupt as it was noted, for the invalids and fashionable idlers of Rome. There were famous springs here, which attracted the sick from many quarters, and it is said that the ancient name came from the sulphurous stench which they emitted. Puteoli is no longer a fashionable watering place, but from other causes the same name might be applied to the modern Pozzuoli. Yet here we can look upon many of the things which St. Paul saw; the sea itself, fresh and clean as ever; the encircling hills, no less beautiful in their spring greenery than on that spring day when Paul sailed within their encircling arms. We can even see the 17 piers of the great mole which stretched far out into the bay, within whose shelter vessels anchored, one the Alexandrian grain ship on which Paul had arrived. Today we can see T.be ruins of the temple of Serapis, or the splendid marketplace as it is now thought to be, which very likely was in its pristine glory when Paul landed. Tens of thousands of travelers from many lands sail into the famous harbor of Naples every year, but comparatively few of them realize how near they are to the footsteps of St. Paul, and how, after a short trolley ride from the city, they can plant their feet where he trod. Let us take the electric car from Largo Vittoria, where the beautiful park, Naples’ famous promenade and Rotten Row, begins; a park that stretches for nearly a mile along the water front. Soon, however, we get beyond the fashionable quarters and the innumerable hotels. The car makes its slow way through a slummy region where the air is rent with the ■raucous cries for which noisy Naples is famous, and the nose is assailed by more than the seventy odors of Cologne. Tunnel Under Poslllpo. Shortly a tunnel is reached under the green hills of Poslllpo, a tunnel almost as ancient as Naples itself, for it was dug by the Romans to avoid the steep climb over the precipitous tufa rocks of Posillpo. Seneca, we are told, grumbled at the dust and darkness and the odor of this tunnel, and they have not been improved since his day. The noise is deafening from the clatter of horses’ hoofs, the patter of herds of goats, the grinding torture of the electric car wheels, and above all the brazen throats of the Neapolitans who urge on their donkeys with an indescribable noise, guttural and grating, which seems to come from the innermost parts of their anatomy. Imagine all this noise, duplicated and reduplicated by the resounding arches of the tunnel, and one can have some idea of the grotto that leads him to Pozzuoli, the ancient Puteoli of St. Paul. Another slum awaits us at the other side of the grotto, followed by vineyards and orange groves and truck farms, until, after a ride of four or five miles, the last part of which affords glorious views of the bay and its islands, which never lose their charm, we at last find ourselves in another slum, more hopeless than any we have yet seen on the way, and find that we have at last reached the old Puteoli, and that the electric car leaves us but a few steps from the spot where the great apostle must have come ashore. The Immediate surroundings of the great pier where St. Paul landed are as filthy as any other part of Pozzuoli. Indescribable old hags leer at us from the doorways; ragged and dirty children, wholly unacquainted with the use of a pocket handkerchief, swarm around us. Several small fishing boats are drawn up on the shore, and a little church, called St. Paul’s Chapel, stands immediately behind the ancient mole. „ The modern pier, built over the ancient mole, is a truly magnificent one of solid cut stone, which runs far out into the sweet, clean water, and by going out to the far end wo get beyond the reach of the importunate tout. If one can forget the approaches to the pier, he can here enjoy the enchanting scenery of sea and shore, while his mind is stimulated by memories of the mighty past. But y>e volcanoes have brought blessings as well as curses, for the ash which they pour forth becomes in a few years a soil of almost incredible fertility, like the volcanic soil of the Yakima valley on our own Pacifia coast •>/