Page:Once a Week, Series 1, Volume II Dec 1859 to June 1860.pdf/629

616 We had ordered our donkeys to come early the next morning, to take us up the Monte Epomeo—the volcano which has now shown no signs of mischievous intentions for many a long year, and is consequently called extinct. On descending from our room, accordingly, at six o’clock, we found them and the guide at the hotel door. The road for the first mile or two, was like most Italian roads, buried between two lofty walls, from whose crevices capers and other creeping plants forced their way, decorating the old stones with their graceful festoons, while grape-vines and orange-trees peeped from above.

Emerging from these narrow ways, we came upon an open pathway on the mountain, which in its various zones resembles its archetype, Etna. On the lower region gardens and orchards, maize, grapes, plums, and cherries, lemons and oranges, crowd every available foot of ground. Above comes a belt of chestnut-trees, but none a cento cavalli. The trees here, being used almost exclusively for coopering, are kept in a state of mere brushwood, like the copses in the hop counties of England. There are no large trees; but their thick leafage made it cool and shady, and the soft green light was most grateful to the eyes of those just emerging from the full blaze of the June sun. Leaving these “delightful pleasant groves,” we came out upon the barren summits of the mountain, but neither snow nor scoria hinder one’s progress. A glorious view opened upon us here. At our feet, far down, lay the little town and port of Ischia, and the Castello di Nerone, diminished, as the American witness would have said, to the size of a bit of chalk; the summer palace of the King embosomed in trees; the Porto Nuovo just finished for the convenience of his Majesty’s yachts; and the vine-clad promontory and white villas of Casamicciola further west, with Foria in the distance. Across the purple sea the whole range of the Italian coast, from the Circæan promontory to the Campanella, was spread before us. The bay of Pozzuoli; the islands of Bivar, Procida, and Nisida; the promontory of Miseno; Posilipo and Vesuvius, and Monte St. Angelo peering over from the other side, as if to assert the pretensions of that other bay of beauty which lay between us and them. The bay of Naples is so generally allowed to be the queen of its class, that it is rather venturous to question its pre-eminence; but I am half inclined to uphold that of Pozzuoli for a certain charm analogous to that of expression in a face which cannot boast such striking features perhaps as another, which, nevertheless, pleases less. The air was so still and clear that every detail was distinctly visible. The rigging of the ships, the windows and chimneys of the houses in the towns, or of the white villas peeping out from their orange gardens, the guns in the forts. It was like looking close at a beautiful little model rather than taking a bird’s-eye view of a large extent of sea and land. In spite of the sun, which now poured its noontide rays upon our heads, we lingered long under the shelter of our white umbrellas, gazing on the map spread out before us; and it was well that we took advantage of the opportunity, for, on reaching the summit of the mountain, half-an-hour later, after turning its flank, we found the whole had disappeared like the baseless fabric of a vision. We were completely enveloped in a white fleecy cloud, and could not see a yard before us. The top of the mountain has been converted into a sort of socialist hermitage, where four or five gentlemen