Pontine Marshes, Terracina, Mola de Gaeta. 269 



perfection. Even at Caserta, the King of Naples's country- 

 seat, though but fifteen miles east of Naples, and not above 

 from 150 ft. to 200 ft. higher, the oranges, we were told, are 

 very indifferent, and that the great canal in the garden is 

 frozen over every winter, and the cascades converted into 

 masses of ice; and, wherever aloes are planted at Naples in open 

 and unsheltered situations, they are constantly cut and stunted. 

 Mola de Gaeta. — Between Terracina and Mola, numerous 

 carob or locust-bean trees (Ceratonia Siliqua) grow, inter- 

 mingled with the olives ; and being also evergreen, but with 

 leaves of a lighter green somewhat resembling those of the 

 common acacia ; and the hedges being mostly composed of 

 laurustinus, sweet bay, and myrtle; while the banks were 

 covered with jErica arborea, v4sph6delus ramosus, E v chium 

 italicum, iycopsis [Nonea] bullata, &c. &c. ; all, like the 

 laurustinus and sweet bay, in full flower ; it needed an effort 

 of recollection to recall to mind that it was still the first week 

 of March. The carob trees, however, though more abundant 

 here than we had before observed them, are also cultivated as 

 far north as Genoa; where, as here, their long, compressed, 

 and very sweet pods are both eaten by the common people 

 and given to horses. At Mola, our inn, which had formerly 

 been the villa of an Italian nobleman, was delightfully situ- 

 ated in the middle of a garden, and commanded the finest 

 views of the Bay of Gaeta (second in beauty only to that of 

 Naples), and included in its bounds the supposed ruins of one 

 of Cicero's villas (his Formianum), close to the water's edge. 

 These ruins were shown to us by the gardener who rented the 

 garden in which the inn stood ; which seemed altogether about 

 two acres in extent, and was chiefly occupied with orange and 

 lemon trees, to the number of 700, now laden with fruit. For 

 this garden, he told us (and the landlord confirmed his state- 

 ment), he pays 600 scudi or crowns (about 120/.) a year rent; 

 a sum which may give an idea of the high value of these 

 favoured spots of land suitable to the orange and lemon. 

 The price of the largest oranges, which are of excellent qua- 

 lity, on the spot, to be sent to Rome, &c, is 3 paoli (15d.) a 

 hundred ; and he pointed out one of the orange trees, of mid- 

 dle size, which had this year borne five hundred. He gave us 

 some sweet lemons, not differing in appearance from common 

 lemons, except that they were extremely more rugged, but 

 with juice of an insipid sweet taste, and without the slightest 

 acidity.* 



* At Naples another curious variety of lemon is exposed in the streets 

 for sale, having externally the exact colour and shape of an orange, except 

 that at the stalk end is a depression, and on this a prominence, as in 

 the lemon, but within having the pale pulp of the lemon, and sweet juice. 



