86 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



indeed, as a general rule, preferred to direct the good 

 old dromedary by means of that appendage. With 

 this attendance how many hills have we climbed, 

 and beguiled how many languid hours ! over roads 

 narrow and stony, and of imperial date the Roman 

 roads that once went through the world but here all 

 interspersed with stairs, and mostly hemmed in by 

 walls, over which came heavy and sweet the breath 

 of the orange - blossoms which perfume the entire 

 island ; past cottages all white and windowless, with 

 flat faintly-rounded roofs that spoke of the East, and 

 out upon the free hillside, where all the slopes were 

 bristling with fantastic apparitions of vegetation, the 

 quaint and hideous prickly pear. But howsoever the 

 road went, it led always to some mount of vision, 

 from which the strangers could look again upon those 

 unparalleled coasts, the landscape which no poet's 

 imagination could surpass, and of which even the 

 guides were to a certain extent sensible, but in a 

 reasonable way. " Vedi Napoli, e mori" in humble 

 quotation of the proverb, said an English lady in a 

 moment of enthusiasm. Feliciello stopped short by 

 the stirrup, and Pascorello turned from his horse's tail. 

 " But why, signora 1 " said the wondering Capriotes ; 

 perhaps because, seeing Naples every day, they felt no 

 necessity for dying. With peasants, even when they 

 are Italians, the sentimental stands but little chance. 

 But they were not indifferent like the prosaic Swiss, 

 to whom their mountains are a matter of trade. A 



