FEVER MARSHES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 497, 3 April 1933, Page 7

FEVER MARSHES

| REGLAIMED IN ITALY i ' ! i NEARLY 150,000 ACRES AVAILABLE FOR FARMING. HUGE PROJEOT J The Pontine Marsh'es, renowned j through the history as a breeder of malaria, are beinig reclaimed in one ! of Italy's major engineering projects. j Vast areas of fertile land only 30 miles from densely-populated Rome will be thrown open to colonisation as soon as roads and rural centres can be bnilt in the newly drained seetions. The land will be sold on easy terms in an effort to make the project pay for itself. "While the Pontine Marsh'es lie within easy distance of the cap'ital of Italy, and are crossed by the Appian •Way, one of the world's most famous roads, the region has remained one of j the strangest and least-known corners of Italy," says a bulletin from the National Geogi'aphical Society. I On the left as you travel toward j Terracina, are the oiive-covered Le- | pine Mountains, of gray limestone, J that at sunset are veiled by that beau- 1 tiful purple h'aze one sees so often re- i produced on the background of the j early Renaissance paintings. To the right is the Tyrrhenian Sea, along the ' border of which runs a large sand | dune covered by an oak forest some I 30 miles in length. Between the dnne j and the sea is a series of lagoons. "At the extreme end a solitary mountain rises to all appe'arances from the sea. It is Mount Circeo, the corner-stone of the Pontine Marshes. This mount was an island in bygone ages, as geolioigists have proved, and Homer, eight centuries before Cbrist, speaks of it in the 'Odyssey' as an island, thomgh probably it had already ceased to be so in his day. "The large quadrangle formed by the foothills of the Alban volcanoes, hy the Lepine Mountains, by th'e wooded sand dunes of the coast and by Mount Circeo, just measuring about some 150,000 acres of extraordinarily fertile land embraces the entire area of the Pontine Marshes. The water, hemmed in on all sides could not flow out. "In winter the mountain streams poured their foaming, muddy torrents upon this lowland, flooding thousands of acres; the rich mud slowly settled, co-ating the fields with silt which is the finest of fertilizers; then the waters gradually ran out through narrow channels until, in summer, only the lowest portion of the land, that which lies praetically at sea level, remained is a swampy condition. " A dense luxuriant growth of water plants sprang up with the approach of the warnier seasons; the stagnant, lukewarm waters teemed with life of every description, and toward the month of July the treacherons Anopheles mosquito dropped its filmy larval veil, rose out of the marshes, and, flying around in search of a living for itself, sowed death upon humanity. "By stinging the malarial-infected person the mosquito infects itself, and j then, stinging some healthy individual I it communicates the disease to him. Malaria is not deadly in itself, but its repeated attacks so weaken the human | organism that frequently fatal 111nesses take hold of the fever-stricken body. "The innndations in winter and the malaria in summer drove the p'opulaton out of the plain; but the unparalleled fertility of the soil enticed some people back to defy the disease. The lowlands of the Agro Pontino are deserted; there are no cities or villages, but some lonely hamlets and, scattered here and there, farm buildings, in which' only a few persons live in summer. Many centuries ago most of the inhabitants fled to the mountains, built their towns on some steep hills, and from these vantage ' points made dashes into the plain to work the fields and tend the cattle. Soon these people will be able- to take up permanent homes in reclaimed areas of the former marshes."