as
called Giuseppe.

The way leads past the mineral baths and then strikes uphill, at first
through lanes cut deep in the black lava. The trees met almost overhead.
It is like Devonshire, except that one half hopes to see tropical
foxgloves with violet bells and downy leaves sprouting among the lush
grasses and sweet-scented ferns upon those gloomy, damp, warm walls.
After this we skirted a thicket of arbutus, and came upon the long
volcanic ridge, with divinest outlook over Procida and Miseno toward
Vesuvius. Then once more we had to dive into brown sandstone gullies,
extremely steep, where the horses almost burst their girths in
scrambling, and the grooms screamed, exasperating their confusion with
encouragement and curses. Straight or bending like a willow wand,
Giuseppe kept in front. I could have imagined he had stepped to life
from one of Lionardo's fancy-sprighted studies.

After this fashion we gained the spine of mountain which composes
Ischia--the smooth ascending ridge that grows up from those eastern
waves to what was once the apex of fire-vomiting Inarime, and breaks in
precipices westward, a ruin of gulfed lava, tortured by the violence of
pent Typhoeus. Under a vast umbrella pine we dismounted, rested, and
saw Capri. Now the road skirts slanting-wise along the further flank of
Epomeo, rising by muddy earth-heaps and sandstone hollows to the quaint
pinnacles which build the summit. There is no inconsiderable peril in
riding over this broken ground; for the soil crumbles away, and the
ravines open downward, treacherously masked with brushwood.

On Epomeo's topmost cone a chapel dedicated to S. Niccolo da Bari, the
Italian patron of seamen, has been hollowed from the rock. Attached to
it is the dwelling of two hermits, subterranean, with long dark
corridors and windows opening on the western seas. Church and hermitage
alike are scooped, with slight expenditure of mason's skill, from solid
mountain. The windows are but loopholes, leaning from which the town of
Forio is seen, 2500 feet below; and the jagged precipices of the
menacing Falange toss their contorted horror forth to sea and sky.
Through gallery and grotto we wound in twilight under a monk's guidance,
and came at length upon the face of the crags above Casamicciola. A few
steps upward, cut like a ladder in the stone, brought us to the topmost
peak--a slender spire of soft, yellowish tufa. It reminded me (with
differences) of the way one climbs th