se concerning the Echo as I had been before.

It was my Design to have proceeded from Milan either to Venice or to the
famous Capital City of Rome; but Instructions from his Eminence forced
me to retrace my steps, and at Genoa I embarked for Naples. This is a
very handsome place, but villanously Dirty, and governed in a most
Despotic Manner. Nearly all the Corn Country round about belongs to the
Jesuits, who make a pretty Penny by it. The taxes very high, and laid on
Wine, Meat, Oil, and other Necessaries of Life; indeed on every thing
eatable except Fruit and Fowls, which you may buy for a Song. All
Foreigners who have here purchased Estates are loaded with Extraordinary
Taxes and Impositions. The City is remarkable for its Silk Stockings,
Waistcoats, Breeches, and Caps; Soap, Perfume, and Snuff-boxes. They
cool their Wine with Snow, which they get out of pits dug in the
Mountain-sides. Near here, too, is a Burning Mountain they call Vesuvio.
It may be mighty curious, but 'tis as great a Nuisance and Perpetual
Alarm to the peaceable Inhabitants of Naples as a Powder Magazine. Very
often this Vesuvio gives itself up to hideous Bellowing, causing the
Windows, nay the very Houses, in Naples to Shake, and then it vomits
forth vast Quantities of melted Stuff, which streams down the
Mountain-sides like a pot boiling over. Sometimes it darkens the Sun
with Smoke, causing a kind of Eclipse; then a Pillar of Black Smoke will
start up to a prodigious Height in the air, and the next morning you
will find the Court and Terrace of your House, be it ten miles away, all
strewn with Fine Ashes from Vesuvio.

CHAPTER THE SEVENTH.

I FALL INTO THE HANDS OF RECREANT PAYNIMS, AND AM SEDUCED TO A STATE OF
MISERABLE SLAVERY.

I THINK I should have been much better off, if, stopping at Naples, I
had fallen into the blazing Crater of Vesuvio, and have cast up again
into the air in the shape of Red-Hot Ashes. I think it would have been
better for me to be Bitten by the Tarantula Spider (which is about the
size of a small Nutmeg, and when it bites a person throws him into all
kinds of Tumblings, Anger, Fear, Weeping, Crazy Talk, and Wild Actions,
accompanied by a kind of Bedlam Gambado), than to have gone upon the
pretty Dance I was destined to Lead. However, there was no disobeying
the commands of his Eminence, who, in his Smooth Italian way, told me at
Paris that those of his Servants who did not attend to his Behests,
were much s