rintending the brilliant sunset over Capri, as we passed the
last point commanding it; and the light, fading away, left us
stumbling over the rough path among the hills, darkened by the high
walls. We were not sorry to emerge upon the crest above the Massa
road. For there lay the sea, and the plain of Sorrento, with its
darkening groves and hundreds of twinkling lights. As we went down
the last descent, the bells of the town were all ringing, for it was
the eve of the fete of St. Antonino.

CAPRI

"CAP, signor? Good day for Grott." Thus spoke a mariner, touching
his Phrygian cap. The people here abbreviate all names. With them
Massa is Mas, Meta is Met, Capri becomes Cap, the Grotta Azzurra is
reduced familiarly to Grott, and they even curtail musical Sorrento
into Serent.

Shall we go to Capri? Should we dare return to the great Republic,
and own that we had not been into the Blue Grotto? We like to climb
the steeps here, especially towards Massa, and look at Capri. I have
read in some book that it used to be always visible from Sorrento.
But now the promontory has risen, the Capo di Sorrento has thrust out
its rocky spur with its ancient Roman masonry, and the island itself
has moved so far round to the south that Sorrento, which fronts
north, has lost sight of it.

We never tire of watching it, thinking that it could not be spared
from the landscape. It lies only three miles from the curving end of
the promontory, and is about twenty miles due south of Naples. In
this atmosphere distances dwindle. The nearest land, to the
northwest, is the larger island of Ischia, distant nearly as far as
Naples; yet Capri has the effect of being anchored off the bay to
guard the entrance. It is really a rock, three miles and a half
long, rising straight out of the water, eight hundred feet high at
one end, and eighteen hundred feet at the other, with a depression
between. If it had been chiseled by hand and set there, it could not
be more sharply defined. So precipitous are its sides of rock, that
there are only two fit boat-landings, the marina on the north side,
and a smaller place opposite. One of those light-haired and freckled
Englishmen, whose pluck exceeds their discretion, rowed round the
island alone in rough water, last summer, against the advice of the
boatman, and unable to make a landing, and weary with the strife of
the waves, was in considerable peril.

Sharp and clear as Capri is in outline, its contour