here and there; or above, on the right, where the view is more extended and the seclusion greater. The roadway is excellent, being of hard whitish tufa soil, although in dry weather not lacking in dust. The entire peninsula is a formation of tufa, which has the convenient property of being treated as rock if you want rock, or as dirt if you want that This light-yellow volcanic product varies in hardness in different places. One unfamiliar with it is puzzled by seeing rising from the sea great cliffs and headlands composed of what appears to be loose, yellow sand, or clay, on which, in apparently reckless proximity to the edge, are solid buildings and beacons. It is the rock-like tufa, and it withstands the action of the sea moderately well. The humbler inhabitants of the Posilippo hill have taken advantage of its peculiar texture, and made for themselves by no means uncomfortable dwellings by excavating the perpendicular bank that borders the road, and boarding up the front of the habitations so formed. As their families increase and more room is needed, what is easier than to hew out another alcove or two? Some of the more enterprising keep trattorie in such places, and offer the way-farer refreshment at prices commensurate with the low scale of business expenses and ground rent.

Slowly moving up the slope, we pass many a villa of note, or historic ruins, such as the uncompleted palace designed and erected two centuries ago for a duchess who never occupied it, and named after her, "Donna Anna." Its foundations stand in the water, and its high walls, pierced with staring black windows, are plainly visible from the city-a memento of the past, which at once excites the curiosity of the visitor to Naples. It gives no sign of the splendor of which it was designed to be the scene, but like many another home of the high and lordly, it has come to an humble use as the home of lazzarone and the site of a trattoria which, in the upper story, is on a level with the coast road.

Compared to the superb outlook from this gradually ascending road, the view from the town below seems meagre. The widened sea, growing misty with

distance, forms a setting of the purest azure for the pink and yellow tints of the city, the graceful slopes of smoking Vesuvius, the gem-like mass of the Sorrento peninsula, and the hazy Capri to the south. Not until it nears the southern point of the headland does the road leave this scene of unrivalled splendor. There we linger to trace in a final view the myriad points of interest spread before us as in a map-from the grim old Castello dell'Ovo, projecting from the city's sea wall in the left middle distance, along the shore crowded with light colored buildings that harmonize in tint so perfectly with the deeper tones of the purple slopes and heights, to the towns and villages that dot the coast line under the volcano's symmetrical cone; southward, to where on the long, low incline of the ancient lava deposits, the site of Pompeii may be seen-a reminder in its terrible doom of the slumbering power of the near volcano which, on a day, mayhap, as peaceful and lovely as this, dealt death and destruction to the trusting people under its shadow; while to the south is beautiful Mount St. Angelo, the summit of the rugged Sorrento sierra, along which are seen groups of buildings, mere white specks on the dark mountain flanks and on the light cliffs of the shore-the towns of Castellamare, Meta, Sorrento and others, with many scattered villas between-a panorama of exquisite beauty, seen as it is through an air that establishes a tender harmony of tint among its myriad colors.

Through deep cuts in the homogeneous tufa-rock which rises almost perpendicularly for scores of feet on either side, through clouds of white dust which would effectually obscure the view could one be had, at about three miles from the Villa Nazionale we emerge upon a plateau overlooking an entirely different scene. The Posilippo height is behind us, and the islands and headlands of the Phlegræan coast are in plain view. Down this western side of the verdure-clad ridge the smooth, white road, protected by a low wall, zig-zags to the level beach that leads westward to the Pozzuoli cliffs. Every foot of the plain below us, as well as the terraced slope below the road, is under cultivation-a seeming oäsis in contrast with the many evidences, on all sides, of

themselves in clear reflections in the calm waters of the bay formed by the island and cape. Somehow it seems, with a peculiar fitness, that the Government has chosen the highest point of this long-slumbering old crater as a site for a prison.

Farther to the west is a long, serrated pyramid of monochrome lavender, the volcanic island of Ischia, as treacherous an abode for man as the flanks of Vesuvius itself. A few years ago the most terrific earthquake that the island has experienced in modern times occurred, when in some of the towns not a building was left standing and many lives were lost. It gives no hint of the awful scenes of which it has been the theatre, as it rests like a cloud of pearly gray on the shimmering ocean. Against it is clearly relieved the nearer pyramid of Cape Miseno -the ancient naval station of the Augus

northern slope. In the middle distance are high cliffs and hills on which the sun paints gleaming colors of opal and amethyst, relieved by the tender blues that fill their gorges and rocky recesses. At each turn of the broad, smooth road some new and charming effect of composition or color is presented.

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Near the end of the road's seaward slope the driver stops at what appears to be a lofty cavern in the face of the Posilippo cliff, which is here very high and steep. A door opens in the wall that closes the end of the excavation, and a guide appears, eager to welcome the rara avis of a sightseer in midsummer, and to show him through this curious Grotto of Sejanus," as this ancient highway between the eastern and western sides of the cape is termed. It is supposed to have been excavated in the first century of this era. In the restoration of ancient monuments which the modern spirit of research has led to, this tunnel has received attention, and now, cleared of the earth and débris that had accumulated in it during the long centuries in which it remained neglected or forgotten, it

has again become a practicable avenue, though one of interest to the antiquary and the tourist rather than of use as a commercial highway. It is nearly one thousand yards in length by, originally, twenty to forty feet in width, and its height varies from sixty to one hundred feet. At frequent intervals the ancient walls have been buttressed with columns of square tufa blocks, between which the guide shows by the dim light of his lantern the lozenge-shaped blocks with which the builders of nearly two thousand years ago lined and strengthened the walls. The path gradually rises to the centre, though in the intense darkness of the place, which the glow-worm light of the lantern only seems to intensify, no change of grade can be seen. One realizes in such a place what blackness is. The place is cool almost to the point of discomfort, although outside the air is excessively warm. On we go in the black void, hoping no earthquake or other cataclysm has disturbed the level and opened a pitfall in the invisible path since last the guide went through. At a point some rods beyond the middle of the "Grotto," the guide stops, and turning in the direction from which we had been coming, a star of dazzling brilliancy is seen. It is difficult to believe that it is the western entrance of the tunnel, so small is it and so luminous in contrast with the profound blackness of the place.

A gleam of light soon appears on the left wall as we resume our walk, and it is seen to enter from a short side-gallery to the right, entering which a few steps brings us into the dazzling light of day. We are on a little platform on the southern face of the promontory, overlooking the sea and the bay of Trentaremi, well below us. A great wall of fantastically carved tufa forms the bay's western shore, which from its resemblance-now very faint indeed-to a horse, is called the Punta di Cavallo.

The precipitous and savage shores enclose a bay a few acres in extent. Beautiful is the contrast of the purple shadows cast on the water with the subdued-gold color of the opposite sunlit bank; the glorious blue of the shining sea fades away to the high horizon line, broken only by the beautiful pearly mass of distant Capri, faint, yet well marked, against

the southern sky. Lateen-sailed boats move slowly across the scene, their bright sails repeated in glimmering lines in the gently rippled sea. Over all is a cloudless sky whose tender tint all these objects seem designed to complement in a pictorial composition which art may vainly seek to portray.

Down by the water at the end of the left-hand bank are seen steps leading from an opening in the rock to a path ending at the fragments of a tower. Here the trustful may believe that Virgil was wont to come from the villa above to meditate and to compose, mayhap, those works which millions of youthful students have wished he had chosen to write in some other language. If you doubt it, you are shown on the knoll above, his "School," as the Italian "Scoglio, or rock, from its similarity to Scuola, "is rather freely rendered. Certain it is that the poet frequented this promontory, and that his tomb is to-day shown the traveler on the northern end of the Posilippo hill, near the city.

The eastern outlet of the grotto brings us to an uneven plateau sheltered by the rugged, verdure-clad heights of the cape. Here in a small vineyard is the dwelling of another guide, to whom you are handed over for an inspection of the antiquities of the adjacent shore. From here it is but a short walk to the crumbled remains of the Theatre of Lucullus. Although few of the stone benches remain, the amphitheatre's outline is plainly seen in the tangle of brush and the débris that time has thrown over the place. Where once the players stood and amused or thrilled the crowded benches is now enacted the prosaic drama of vegetableraising, and the hut and outbuildings of the occupant of the place now furnish more realistic scenery and stage-setting than haply were ever mounted thereon by the stage carpenters and scene-shifters of a score of centuries ago.

From this point we look back upon the Trentaremi cove and the high wall at its head, far up on which is the mouth of the grotto. To the right, rising directly from the water, is a tall, square column of tufa standing like a chimney a few yards from the steep shore, with which a ridge of the yellow earth-rock connects it at or about half way of its height. Some dare-devil

has mounted the crumbling column from this point and cut steps in its seaward side some yards down from the top.

Returning through the grotto after a short rest made more grateful by a few bunches of the guide's muscatels, at a point a short distance from the exit, the landscape of the Pozzuoli hills and cliffs, seen through the opening over the grotto door, has the effect of a brilliant painting framed in the intense black of the interior of the tunnel.

The warmth of the sun is not unwelcome after the quarter-hour stay in the cool cavern. A few turns of the road bring us to the beach, which here trends to the north and west, with small hotels scattered along it where hot mineral springs have attracted the ailing from time immemorial, and formed nuclei for little settlements. The road is now approaching a district which has been the scene of great seismic disturbances, and of successive subsidences and elevations in comparatively recent times. The precipitous, rocky height round which the road curves shows to the geologist at a height of thirty feet above the present sea-level an ancient sea line in which marine organisms have been found. The ground we are driving over was, not many centuries ago, the bottom of the sea which washed the cliff many feet above us; while fragments of the works of man both above and below the stratum of marine forms attest the alteration of the coast line in historic times.

We are approaching the site of the first Greek settlements in Italy, whence there emigrated nearly three thousand years ago to the eastern side of the Posilippo ridge the founders of Neapolis-the "new city," or Naples of to-day. The entire district, including the town of Pozzuoli and Baja and ancient Cuma on the western shore north of cape Miseno, is known as the Phlegræan plain-a place rich in classic lore, where the student of Virgil may see the fabled localities which his hero frequented, and the place of his descent to the infernal regions. It abounds in traces of the works of the ancient dwellers, but the traveler will seek vainly to identify the innumerable fragments of statues and of architectural handiwork with which the soil fairly teems, and which excite so lively an

interest regarding their original place and purpose.

Up the slope, past an old decaying castle in the water on the left, we reach the arched entrance to the town of Pozzuoli. Like thrifty pilots who make long trips to sea in search of incoming vessels, the importunate guides of these more famous Italian towns stand ready to seize the tourist all along the streets leading to the city's entrances. Through long practice they are able to "spot" a stranger, and particularly a foreigner, at an incredible distance. A peculiar and, as it were, intermittent deafness seems to afflict them. Any question put to them as well as the affirmative "Yes," they readily comprehend; but the little word "No!" however loudly shouted or however emphasized with desperate gesticulation they seem utterly unable to hear. I know not how many miles these fellows might have trotted beside the carriage with their glib repertoire of sights and antiquities, and of dangers and difficulties besetting the lone tourist, had I not in sheer weariness ceased declining their proffers, stopped the carriage and taken refuge behind a newspaper. Then I had peace.

The Pozzuoli of to-day is of interest o the stranger only by reason of its exhumed antiquities and its many evidences of seismic changes. Little indication does it give of the prosperity it once enjoyed as one of the chief commercial cities of this part of the world. One of the first places the tourist visits is the Temple of Serapis, immediately upon the northern border of the town. Hidden from view and practically unknown for centuries, this fine example of the old dipteral temples was brought to light in the last century, and found to possess a double interest in being at once a monument of unusual archæological interest and an indisputable record for the geologist of the changes of level which this district has experienced in historic times. In a space a few score feet square to which the aged custodian admits you, is all that the sea and the volcano have left of this once beautiful temple. Of the original forty-six columns of marble and granite that formed its double colonnade, and whose fragments, together with broken capitals,