ed conditions of life, and that not a small
proportion of them have grown venal and grasping. The happy old days when
artists and inn-keepers, peasants and such chance visitors as loved the
simple unsophisticated life, hob-nobbed together on terms of equality are
gone for ever. Fashion, that merciless deity, has annexed the Insula
Caprearum to her ever-growing dominions;--there are smart villas on the
Tragara road and even at Ana-Capri; there are British tea-rooms and
Teutonic _Bierhaelle_ in the town. At the present time the tourists and
foreign residents form the chief source of wealth to the islanders, now
that the quails have more or less deserted these shores. Instead of
awaiting in due season with nets ready prepared the advent of the plump
little feathered immigrants from the African coast, the modern Caprioti
are continually on the look-out for the steamers that bear hundreds of
money-spending tourists to the Marina, and these they proceed to enmesh
with proffered offers of service. And, speaking of the quails, in the days
before breech-loading guns and reckless extermination had injured this
valuable source of revenue, the arrival of the birds winging their way
northward was the signal for every sportsman on the island to hasten to
collect the annual harvest of game. High poles, supporting nets twenty
feet broad and sixty feet long, were erected on the grassy slopes of the
Solaro or in the plateau of the Tragara, towards which, by dint of
judicious scaring and shouting from expectant watchers stationed at
various points, the flight of the on-rushing birds was directed. Dashing
themselves with force against this wall of netting, the poor quails fell
stunned to the ground, where they were easily taken by hand, whilst scores
of guns were levelled ready to bring down such birds as had escaped the
snare prepared for them. From the thousands of quails thus captured the
islanders were enabled to pay their taxes to the Bourbon Government, as
well as to provide the income of their Bishop--for in those distant days a
prelate dwelt at Capri--who in allusion to his chief source of income was
jocularly known at the Roman court as "Il Vescovo delle Quaglie."

From Ana-Capri to the western shore extends the most fertile stretch of
land in the island: a broad slope set with vineyards and groves of
silver-grey olives, that are interspersed here and there with clumps of
almond and plum trees. Fine oil is yielded by the _poderi_ of