The day came when we tired of the brilliancy and din of Naples, most
noisy of cities. Neapolis, or Parthenope, as is well known, was founded
by Parthenope, a siren who was cast ashore there. Her descendants still
live here; and we have become a little weary of their inherited musical
ability: they have learned to play upon many new instruments, with which
they keep us awake late at night, and arouse us early in the morning.
One of them is always there under the window, where the moonlight
will strike him, or the early dawn will light up his love-worn visage,
strumming the guitar with his horny thumb, and wailing through his
nose as if his throat was full of seaweed. He is as inexhaustible as
Vesuvius. We shall have to flee, or stop our ears with wax, like the
sailors of Ulysses.
The day came when we had checked off the Posilipo, and the Grotto,
Pozzuoli, Baiae, Cape Misenum, the Museum, Vesuvius, Pompeii,
Herculaneum, the moderns buried at the Campo Santo; and we said, Let
us go and lie in the sun at Sorrento. But first let us settle our
geography.
The Bay of Naples, painted and sung forever, but never adequately, must
consent to be here described as essentially a parallelogram, with an
opening towards the southwest. The northeast side of this, with Naples
in the right-hand corner, looking seaward and Castellamare in the
left-hand corner, at a distance of some fourteen miles, is a vast rich
plain, fringed on the shore with towns, and covered with white houses
and gardens. Out of this rises the isolated bulk of Vesuvius. This
growing mountain is manufactured exactly like an ant-hill.
The northwest side of the bay, keeping a general westerly direction,
is very uneven, with headlands, deep bays, and outlying islands. First
comes the promontory of Posilipo, pierced by two tunnels, partly natural
and partly Greek and Roman work, above the entrance of one of which is
the tomb of Virgil, let us believe; then a beautiful bay, the shore of
which is incrusted with classic ruins. On this bay stands Pozzuoli, the
ancient Puteoli where St. Paul landed one May day, and doubtless walked
up this paved road, which leads direct to Rome. At the entrance, near
the head of Posilipo, is the volcanic island of “shining Nisida,” to
which Brutus retired after the assassination of Caesar, and where he
bade Portia good-by before he departed for Greece and Philippi: the
favorite villa of Cicero, where he wrote many of his letters to Atticus,
looked on it. Baiae, epitome of the luxury and profligacy, of the
splendor and crime of the most sensual years of the Roman empire, spread
there its temples, palaces, and pleasure-gardens, which crowded the low
slopes, and extended over the water; and yonder is Cape Misenum, which
sheltered the great fleets of Rome.
This region, which is still shaky from fires bubbling under the thin
crust, through which here and there the sulphurous vapor breaks out, is
one of the most sacred in the ancient world. Here are the Lucrine Lake,
the Elysian Fields, the cave of the Cumean Sibyl, and the Lake Avernus.
This entrance to the infernal regions was frozen over the day I saw it;
so that the profane prophecy of skating on the bottomless pit might have
been realized. The islands of Procida and Ischia continue and complete
this side of the bay, which is about twenty miles long as the boat
sails.
At Castellamare the shore makes a sharp bend, and runs southwest along
the side of the Sorrentine promontory. This promontory is a high, rocky,
diversified ridge, which extends out between the bays of Naples and
Salerno, with its short and precipitous slope towards the latter. Below
Castellamare, the mountain range of the Great St. Angelo (an offshoot of
the Apennines) runs across the peninsula, and cuts off that portion of
it which we have to consider. The most conspicuous of the three parts of
this short range is over four thousand seven hundred feet above the
Bay of Naples, and the highest land on it. From Great St. Angelo to the
point, the Punta di Campanella, it is, perhaps, twelve miles by balloon,
but twenty by any other conveyance. Three miles off this point lies
Capri.
This promontory has a backbone of rocky ledges and hills; but it has
at intervals transverse ledges and ridges, and deep valleys and chains
cutting in from either side; so that it is not very passable in any
direction. These little valleys and bays are warm nooks for the olive
and the orange; and all the precipices and sunny slopes are terraced
nearly to the top. This promontory of rocks is far from being barren.
From Castellamare, driving along a winding, rockcut road by the
bay,--one of the most charming in southern Italy,--a distance of seven
miles, we reach the Punta di Scutolo. This point, and the opposite
headland, the Capo di Sorrento, inclose the Piano di Sorrento, an
irregular plain, three miles long, encircled by limestone hills, which
protect it from the east and south winds. In this amphitheater it
lies, a mass of green foliage and white villages, fronting Naples and
Vesuvius.
If nature first scooped out this nook level with the sea, and then
filled it up to a depth of two hundred to three hundred feet with
volcanic tufa, forming a precipice of that height along the shore, I can
understand how the present state of things came about.
This plain is not all level, however. Decided spurs push down into it
from the hills; and great chasms, deep, ragged, impassable, split in the
tufa, extend up into it from the sea. At intervals, at the openings of
these ravines, are little marinas, where the fishermen have their huts'
and where their boats land. Little villages, separate from the world,
abound on these marinas. The warm volcanic soil of the sheltered plain
makes it a paradise of fruits and flowers.
Sorrento, ancient and romantic city, lies at the southwest end of this
plain, built along the sheer sea precipice, and running back to the
hills,--a city of such narrow streets, high walls, and luxuriant groves
that it can be seen only from the heights adjacent. The ancient boundary
of the city proper was the famous ravine on the east side, a similar
ravine on the south, which met it at right angles, and was supplemented
by a high Roman wall, and the same wall continued on the west to the
sea. The growing town has pushed away the wall on the west side; but
that on the south yet stands as good as when the Romans made it. There
is a little attempt at a mall, with double rows of trees, under that
wall, where lovers walk, and ragged, handsome urchins play the exciting
game of fives, or sit in the dirt, gambling with cards for the Sorrento
currency. I do not know what sin it may be to gamble for a bit of
printed paper which has the value of one sou.
The great ravine, three quarters of a mile long, the ancient boundary
which now cuts the town in two, is bridged where the main street,
the Corso, crosses, the bridge resting on old Roman substructions,
as everything else about here does. This ravine, always invested with
mystery, is the theme of no end of poetry and legend. Demons inhabit
it. Here and there, in its perpendicular sides, steps have been cut
for descent. Vines and lichens grow on the walls: in one place, at the
bottom, an orange grove has taken root. There is even a mill down there,
where there is breadth enough for a building; and altogether, the ravine
is not so delivered over to the power of darkness as it used to be.
It is still damp and slimy, it is true; but from above, it is always
beautiful, with its luxuriant growth of vines, and at twilight
mysterious. I like as well, however, to look into its entrance from the
little marina, where the old fishwives are weaving nets.
These little settlements under the cliff, called marinas, are worlds in
themselves, picturesque at a distance, but squalid seen close at hand.
They are not very different from the little fishing-stations on the Isle
of Wight; but they are more sheltered, and their inhabitants sing at
their work, wear bright colors, and bask in the sun a good deal, feeling
no sense of responsibility for the world they did not create. To weave
nets, to fish in the bay, to sell their fish at the wharves, to eat
unexciting vegetables and fish, to drink moderately, to go to the chapel
of St. Antonino on Sunday, not to work on fast and feast days, nor more
than compelled to any day, this is life at the marinas. Their world is
what they can see, and Naples is distant and almost foreign. Generation
after generation is content with the same simple life. They have no more
idea of the bad way the world is in than bees in their cells.