VIII

SIGNAL TOWERS

IVES there a traveller journeying towards

L

Lake Como who is not moved to an

awakening curiosity and interest by the

first glimpse of a tower rising on a height? The adjacent detached fragments of masonry may suggest only the picturesque remnants of a medieval castle, but the tower is a key-note, in site and foundations, at least, of the day of Roman ascendency over Europe. A picture of the romantic era of literature is presented to the most practical mind in the gliding past of a railway train, of the knight spurring forth over the drawbridge, falcon on wrist, and the noble dame in damask robe and farthingale at the casement. The tower, whether built of roughly jointed stone, with bold machicolations of battlements, or as having square angle turrets, has other associations.

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The tap of the telegraph is audible on the shores of Como to-day. The official in the station writes off the brief message, and sends forth the despatch to the local silk merchant, or the stranger within the gates. The transaction is scarcely of more moment than the arrival of the mail.

Once the towers on the ridge served the same end in a more tragic and momentous fashion. How thrilling the greeting, or warning, read by trembling women and children in the beacon of day or night from these signal stations! How the bronzed cheek of manhood paled, and the heart of youth throbbed tumultuously at the message that there was danger in the very air for all the inhabitants of the surrounding country, and even the frontier!

Now these citadels may be the granary of a farm, heaped full of hay and golden straw, with red peppers and ears of maize strung above an embrasure to dry in the sun of autumn. The pigeons circle around the parapet, and the swallows dart out of the fissures in the coping. In the court-yard and moat the fowls cackle, a

lamb bleats, or a donkey brays. The large square villa near-by has been the summer home for genAll wears the as

erations of a Lombard family.

pect of rural contentment and peace.

The old towers, furrowed and scarred by storms, guard their memories of a grim past.

Baradello on the hill of San Martino sent messages to Torno, Argegno, Cavagnola, Val Intelvi, Bellaggio, Valassina, Menaggio, Grandola, Rezzonico, and Torre Olinio to the Valtellina, on one side, and along the course of the Ticino, Chiasso, Mendrisio, and Bellinzona, with the three old castles still crowning the crags, on the other. These signals were colours by day, and torches, or bonfires on the highest peaks at night.

"The robber lord of yonder fastness is making ready to sally forth on a raid. Flee to shelter with the family and the flocks!" the warning of noon and night have been.

One hamlet could transmit the dreaded news to another in the gorges of the mountains by confiding several handfuls of sawdust to the rapid glacier stream to be swept on the current, and

discerned by anxious eyes aware of the meaning. The beacon fire of midnight signified, possibly, a general alarm in the approach of vast armies of barbarians, fierce and strange of garb and speech, Goth, Gaul, and Hun intent on reaching the gates of Rome.

"Woe and desolation! The foe is upon us!" the pulsing flame of the hill-top proclaimed, and was answered by a wail of distress and fear throughout the length and breadth of the land.

And the old towers brood over the past. The present time does not touch them. The modern world moves on wings of light and speed in the telegraph, and on wings of sound in the telephone. The pigeons and swallows that build their nests under the battlements do not trouble their heads about the matter, unless they promise to carry a greeting to the next castle ruin in a fresh flight. The sheep and calves bleat below. Children laugh. A young contadino sings in a reedy voice, with curious turns and inflections of measure that severe cold in January, bad weather in February, wind in March, soft rains of April,

dews in May, a good reaping in June, a fine winnowing in July, and the three storms of August, - make a season worth more than the throne of Solomon.

An army in glittering uniform, with cavalry and artillery, capable of shattering any structure to the foundations with shell, or riddling the walls with bullets, does not disturb these hoary sentinels. The towers dote and dream only of those earlier hosts that advanced in slow waves of humanity, with their households, chariots, and weapons, and the murmur of many voices, even as the locusts settled on Lombardy in 873, and again in 1364, leaving no green leaf.

Pliny the Younger, as child and man, must have scanned the towers, demanding of these guardians if all was well, and the good citizens of Como might hope to sleep in security through the watches of the night. What would he have thought of that key-note of the twentieth century, whispering a message over the ocean wave, wireless telegraphy?