768 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 
beneath, seems fairer to the traveler than any other spot on earth, and when he 
has walked nine miles inland and climbed the lofty hill Mount Eponeo, as it is 
now called, he sees stretching far into the distance the long indented line of the 
Italian mainland. Procida and other smaller islets are beneath his feet, and 
pleasure boats and fishing smacks, their white sails lazily flapping in the light 
breeze, creep out upon the dancing waters from hundreds of villages clustering 
round the inlets far and near. It is a scene to entrance a poet, but not from its in- 
trinsic beauty only. All the charms of old association are gathered thickly round 
it. Ulysses himself was there when the dawn of history was but passing into the 
morning hours, and it has been consecrated by the immortal verses of both Homer 
and Virgil. In later days Berkely, the most imaginative and sensitive philoso- 
pher since the days of Plato, declared that Ischia was an epitome of the whole 
earth, and the visitor on descending the mount in the center might easily fancy 
that the golden age had returned and that the flaming sword had once again been 
removed from the gates of Eden. Grapevines cover the gentle slopes of the many 
hills, groves of chestnuts and thickets of myrtle crown-their tops. Wheat and 
maize enrich the valleys, and the most exquisite fruit tempts the hand on every 
side. Apricots, peaches, oranges, limes, pomegranates, figs and melons attest 
the richness of the soil and the general beneficence of the climate. Nor does 
languor, as in so many southern lands, step in to clog the full enjoyment of all 
this wondrous loveliness and luxuriant profusion. Even in the height of summer 
the delicious and cooling sea breezes pour a constant fountain of new vigor into 
the frame of the people. * 
So unrivaled a situation has attracted thousands to Ischia. In the early 
years of the sixteenth century three celebrated women simultaneously selected it 
for their temporary home. Joanna, of Naples; Berenice, the widow of the great 
Matthais Corvinus, and Isabella, the widow of Gian Galeazzo, lived near to- 
gether, and a quarter of a century afterward Vittoria Colonna, the widow of the 
hero of Pavia, made it her residence. There she wrote her pathetic poems in 
honor of the memory of the husband she had lost. Hers was one of the greatest. 
female intellects of the middle ages, and thé echoes of her song made Ischia famous 
throughout Europe. When Ariosto and Michael Angelo spoke or wrote of her 
and her works, they dwelt also with rapture upon the landscape in the midst of 
which her genius ripened into such splendid blossom. And as time went on, noble 
men and beautiful women, and poets and artists of afl nations, have delighted to 
haunt the spot for a while and celebrate it with voice, with pen or with brush. 
But ever in the background of.time, the remembrance of a specter of dread days 
that had been, never passed away. ‘The island itself was undoubtedly of volcanic 
origin, and, indeed, during the many years in which Vesuvius slumbered until 
she again awoke into action amid all the horrors that overwhelmed Pompeii and 
Herculaneum, it was believed to be a safety valve for the subterranean fires rag_ 
ing beneath in the bowels of the earth. As in other lands parents tell their 
children tales of fairyland, so in this Ischia, wreathed as it seemed with smiles that 
could never fade, the folk lore was tinged by never so slight a tint drawn from 
