Page:Life in the Old World - Vol. II.djvu/388

398 room to attend to her womanly occupations; and when the lot of the dead seemed to be so gloomy that Achilles in Hades confessed that he would rather live as the poorest day-laborer on earth, than as the ruler of the dead in the realm of shades.

We have contemplated from the heights of Conti, on the other side of the ridge or point of Sorrento, the celebrated islands of the Syrens. They do not now appear to be dangerous from their seductive influence; they are small, naked, rocky islands in the Bay of Salerno, on which one perceives some ruins of former buildings, but no trees, scarcely any bushes. An Amazonian Queen is said to have lived upon the largest of these islands, and may have given occasion to the legends of their dangerous characters. The views over the coast of Salerno and the bay are glorious from this height. After we have seen, on the coast of Salerno, the caves of Ulysses and the romantic bath of Queen Johanna, as well as Tasso's house—but which perhaps is not Tasso's house at all, as that is said to have been washed away by the sea many years ago—we shall be ready to leave Sorrento to proceed to Capri or elsewhere. Our summer Odyssey is not yet ended.

, September 20th.—A stormy passage from Sorrento to Capri. Can Hercules have offended Neptune? Certain it is, that after the sea-god had decoyed us out in the morning by his apparent calmness and good humor, he blew up against us such an angry, contrary wind, that it seemed as if we should never