Salerno becomes vividly mapped out to our eyes from the Cape of Minerva to
the Punta di Licosia. On our left we peer down into the depths of the dark
ravine of the Dragone, whose black shadows are popularly supposed to give
its name of Atrani to the cheerful little town we have left behind. Let us
thank Heaven that we are at last out of reach of the beggars, and that the
only human beings to be encountered upon the road are a few peasants with
loads of fruit or vegetables, and an occasional charcoal-burner bearing
his grimy burden to the town below. The _carbonaio_ with his blackened
face and queer outlandish garments is a familiar figure throughout all
parts of Southern Italy. He belongs to a race apart, that dwells in the
belt of forest land clothing the higher hills, and he only descends to the
cities of the shore and the plain in order to sell his goods. He is
despised by the sharper-witted townsman, who beats down his prices for the
combustibles he has borne with such fatigue from his distant mountain
home. Sometimes the old people are despatched to do the money bargaining,
the selling and buying. Look at the old couple at this moment passing us;
an aged man and woman that Theocritus might have known in earlier days
when the world was less civilized and less greedy of gain. With bare
travel-stained feet, with feeble frames supported by long staves and with
the heavy sacks of charcoal on their bent backs, the modern Baucis and
Philemon crawl along the white road beneath a broiling sun, patient and
uncomplaining, and apparently with no feelings of envy as they cast one
careless glance at our carriage. Weary and foot-sore, they will only
obtain a few _quattrini_ in the town for all their toil and trouble, and
then they must retrace every step up the long hill-side, with their little
stock of provisions to help eke out a miserable existence. Yet can any
life in such a climate and amid such surroundings be truly accounted
miserable, we ask, no matter how humble the dwelling or frugal the fare?

As our carriage creeps slowly upward, we find the land less cultivated,
and now and again we pass tracts of woodland whence little purling streams
fall over rocky ledges on to the roadway. We catch sight of small clumps
of cyclamen, and in the shady hollows we detect tufts of the maiden-hair
fern--_Capilli di Venere_, "Venus' tresses," as the Italians sometimes call
this graceful little plant. At a curve of the road we are confront