—for we did not know until the eve of our departure how long we were to be kept prisoners,—we did not have a very bad time. Nevertheless, it was with no small demonstrations of joy that on the morning of the eighth day of our captivity we took leave of the director of the lazzaretto of Nissida and had ourselves transported bag and baggage in small boats to the mainland at the little village of Coroglio, where carriages were waiting to convey us to Naples.
Our entrance into Naples was more interesting than if we had arrived by rail or landed at the port, for we had a charming drive along a country road bordered with fields of maize, with clusters of fig- and lemon-trees laden with fruit, and with vines trailing in festoons from tree to tree. Here and there along the roadside a flock of sheep would be seen grazing, and the little shepherd-boy stretched out and sleeping lizard-like on the top of a stone wall. Then we came to the village of Fuorigrotta, whose streets were crowded with herds of goats and cows returning from their morning milking at Naples, with asses laden with fruits and vegetables in baskets, with women doing their marketing, and men gossiping. It was only eight o'clock, and already the houses were empty. Everybody was in the street. The washing was being done coram populo, the children were being washed in public, each one, whether cobbler or dress-maker or locksmith or water-seller, was exercising his trade in the road-way.
Thence we passed through the Grotta di Posilippo, an immense tunnel nearly eight hundred yards long, averaging some fifty feet high, and paved with stone slabs. This curious tunnel is supposed to have been constructed in the reign of Augustus, and mediæval superstition attributed it to the magic arts practised by Virgil. Nothing could be more curious than the spectacle of this lofty tunnel crowded with carriages, carts, foot-passengers, donkeys and mules laden with pack-saddles and baskets of fruits, shaded with waving green branches. All these vehicles and all this movement raise a loud rumbling and rattling, dominated by the shrill cries of the drivers and the furious remonstrances of the foot-passengers; and in the dusty atmosphere—dimly lighted in the middle by gas-lamps—the outline of the figures is rendered vague and shadowy. Throughout the whole length of the tunnel you see the most curious effects of perspective, thanks to the dazzling patch of sunlight at each entrance of the tunnel which is reflected far into the dark passage-way.
On issuing from the Grotta di Posilippo you have before you a view of the Bay of Naples, enlivened by innumerable small boats wrinkling the water as they glide along. Up the slope of the hill and down on the plain below, stretching away to the sea-shore, lies, with its domes and palaces, and its houses painted pale-rose and blue and yellow, "the gentle city of Naples," as old James Howell styles it in his "Familiar Letters on Important Subjects," "a city swelling with all delight, gallantry, and wealth; a delicate, luxurious city, fuller of true-bred cavaliers than any place I saw yet."
Naples is no longer the brilliant city it was under the Spanish rule of the seventeenth century, when Howell wrote. But the general aspect, the streets, the movement, the inhabitants, the children whose faces seem all eyes, the women with their shawls of resplendent colors, the men with their wonderful abundance of gestures and inexhaustible chattering, the narrow streets, the architecture,—all this gives a Northerner an impression of something altogether new and strange. Naples is built on and around three hills,—the Capo di Monte, St. Elmo, and Pizzofalcone,—and forms a sort of amphitheatre round the bay, between Posilippo and the Castel del' Ovo, beyond which lies the port and the manufacturing part of the city, which stretches away toward Portici. With the exception, then, of the streets around the port, of the splendid marine promenade La Chiaja, and of two or three broad modern streets, all the thoroughfares of Naples are narrow, steep, and irregular. Many permit only the passage of one vehicle, and others are simply flights of
