from the bitter
east wind of the Riviera, the Riviera is free from the stifling
scirocco of Capri. In the autumn and in the earlier part of the winter
this is sometimes almost intolerable. The wind blows straight from
Africa, hot, dusty, and oppressive in a strange and almost indescribable
way. All the peculiar clearness of the atmosphere disappears; one sees
every feature of the landscape as one would see them through a raw
autumn day in England. The presence of fine dust in the air--the dust of
the African desert to which this effect is said to be owing--may perhaps
account for the peculiar oppressiveness of the scirocco; certain it is,
that after two days of it every nerve in the body seems set ajar.
Luckily however it only lasts for three days and dies down into rain as
the wind veers round to the west.

CAPRI AND ITS ROMAN REMAINS.

II.

Among the many charms of Capri must be counted the number and interest
of its Roman remains. The whole island is in fact a vast Roman wreck.
Hill-side and valley are filled with a mass of _debris_ that brings home
to one in a way which no detailed description can do the scale of the
buildings with which it was crowded. At either landing-place huge
substructures stretch away beneath the waves, the relics of moles, of
arsenals, and of docks; a network of roads may still be traced which
linked together the ruins of Imperial villas; every garden is watered
from Roman cisterns; dig where he will, the excavator is rewarded by the
discovery of vases, of urns, of fragments of sculpture, of mosaic
pavements, of precious marbles. Every peasant has a handful of Roman
coins to part with for a few soldi. The churches of the island and the
royal palaces of the mainland are full of costly columns which have been
removed from the ruins of Capri; and the Museum of Naples is largely
indebted for its treasures of statuary to the researches made here at
the close of the last century. The main archaeological interest of the
island however lies not in fragments or "finds" such as these but in the
huge masses of ruin which lie scattered so thickly over it. The Pharos
which guided the Alexandrian corn-ships to Puteoli stands shattered on
one of its headlands. The waves dash idly against an enormous fragment
of the sea-baths of Tiberius. His palace-citadel still looks from the
summit of a mighty cliff across the Straits of Sorrento. The Stairs of
Anacapri, which in the absence of any other date