of certain antique baths--baths of Augustus, says
Valery; baths of Tiberius, say the Capriotes, zealous for the honor
of their infamous hero. Howbeit, this was all we saw on the way to
the Blue Grotto. Every moment the waves rose higher, emulous of the
bluffs, which would not have afforded a foothold, or any thing to
cling to, had we been upset and washed against them--and we began
to talk of the immortality of the soul. As we neared the grotto, the
patriarch entertained us with stories of the perilous adventures of
people who insisted upon entering it in stormy weather,--especially
of a French painter who had been imprisoned in it four days, and kept
alive only on rum, which the patriarch supplied him, swimming into
the grotto with a bottle-full at a time. "And behold us arrived,
gentlemen!" said he, as he brought the boat skillfully around in front
of the small semicircular opening at the base of the lofty bluff. We
lie flat on the bottom of the boat, and complete the immersion of that
part of our clothing which the driving torrents of rain had spared.
The wave of destiny rises with us upon its breast--sinks, and we are
inside of the Blue Grotto. Not so much blue as gray, however, and the
water about the mouth of it green rather than azure. They say that
on a sunny day both the water and the roof of the cavern are of the
vividest cerulean tint--and I saw the grotto so represented in the
windows of the paint-shops at Naples. But to my own experience it did
not differ from other caves in color or form: there was the customary
clamminess in the air; the sound of dropping water; the sense of dull
and stupid solitude,--a little relieved in this case by the mighty
music of the waves breaking against the rocks outside. The grot is not
great in extent, and the roof in the rear shelves gradually down to
the water. Valery says that some remains of a gallery have caused
the supposition that the grotto was once the scene of Tiberius's
pleasures; and the Prussian painter who discovered the cave was led
to seek it by something he had read of a staircase by which Barbarossa
used to descend into a subterranean retreat from the town of Anacapri
on the mountain top. The slight fragment of ruin which we saw in one
corner of the cave might be taken in confirmation of both theories;
but the patriarch attributed the work to Barbarossa, being probably
tired at last of hearing Tiberius so much talked about.

We returned, soaked and disappoin