100 TRAVEL, ADVENTURE, AND SPORT. 



nature can hold for man. But the dark rocks are 

 more congenial than any charitable beacon to the 

 tragic coast of the Sirens, and there they stand, to 

 warn if anybody could see them, to crash to powder 

 if any hapless little vessel swung against their stony 

 masses in the despair and blackness of a storm. And 

 now let us go back along the flowery road, where the 

 figs and the olives throw sweet patches of shadow, 

 and all the hill below, and all the hill above, runs 

 over with luxuriant growth, confusing the lines of the 

 terraces by the profusion of vegetation, and mantling 

 up all the walls and steps in emerald green ; the sun 

 has gone down behind Solaro, behind Ischia, if we 

 could but see it ; and before we are aware, the bell of 

 the Ave Maria rings out from the old church, and 

 darkness, swift and sudden, falls upon earth and sea. 

 Next day, with a calm sea and no wind to speak 

 of, we will take you to the Grotto Azzurro, which 

 hides round the dark cliffs yonder, in a secrecy so 

 great that it is easy to believe that chance alone 

 rediscovered that wonderful fairy vault. The Medi- 

 terranean is sweet, and sweeter still is the Bay of 

 Naples; but that ideal sea, upon which ordinary 

 persons can launch fairy skiffs and float about for 

 ever without inconvenience, is still hidden in the 

 clouds, like most other ideal things ; and delicious as 

 the blue water is to look at, it would be vain to dis- 

 guise the fact that those long soft undulations are 

 evidences of a swell anything but agreeable to un- 



