There is always a mild excitement about mounting donkeys in the morning
here for an excursion among the hills. The warm sun pouring into the
garden, the smell of oranges, the stimulating air, the general openness
and freshness, promise a day of enjoyment. There is always a doubt as
to who will go; generally a donkey wanting; somebody wishes to join the
party at the last moment; there is no end of running up and downstairs,
calling from balconies and terraces; some never ready, and some waiting
below in the sun; the whole house in a tumult, drivers in a worry, and
the sleepy animals now and then joining in the clatter with a vocal
performance that is neither a trumpet-call nor a steam-whistle, but an
indescribable noise, that begins in agony and abruptly breaks down
in despair. It is difficult to get the train in motion. The lady who
ordered Succarina has got a strange donkey, and Macaroni has on the
wrong saddle. Succarina is a favorite, the kindest, easiest, and
surest-footed of beasts,--a diminutive animal, not bigger than a
Friesland sheep; old, in fact grizzly with years, and not unlike the
aged, wizened little women who are so common here: for beauty in this
region dries up; and these handsome Sorrento girls, if they live, and
almost everybody does live, have the prospect, in their old age, of
becoming mummies, with parchment skins. I have heard of climates that
preserve female beauty; this embalms it, only the beauty escapes in the
process. As I was saying, Succarina is little, old, and grizzly; but her
head is large, and one might be contented to be as wise as she looks.
The party is at length mounted, and clatters away through the narrow
streets. Donkey-riding is very good for people who think they cannot
walk. It looks very much like riding, to a spectator; and it deceives
the person undertaking it into an amount of exercise equal to walking.
I have a great admiration for the donkey character. There never was
such patience under wrong treatment, such return of devotion for injury.
Their obstinacy, which is so much talked about, is only an exercise of
the right of private judgment, and an intelligent exercise of it, no
doubt, if we could take the donkey point of view, as so many of us are
accused of doing in other things. I am certain of one thing: in any
large excursion party there will be more obstinate people than obstinate
donkeys; and yet the poor brutes get all the thwacks and thumps. We are
bound to-day for the Punta della Campanella, the extreme point of the
promontory, and ten miles away. The path lies up the steps from the new
Massa carriage-road, now on the backbone of the ridge, and now in
the recesses of the broken country. What an animated picture is the
donkeycade, as it mounts the steeps, winding along the zigzags! Hear
the little bridlebells jingling, the drivers groaning their “a-e-ugh,
a-e-ugh,” the riders making a merry din of laughter, and firing off a
fusillade of ejaculations of delight and wonder.
The road is between high walls; round the sweep of curved terraces which
rise above and below us, bearing the glistening olive; through glens and
gullies; over and under arches, vine-grown,--how little we make use of
the arch at home!--round sunny dells where orange orchards gleam; past
shrines, little chapels perched on rocks, rude villas commanding most
extensive sweeps of sea and shore. The almond trees are in full bloom,
every twig a thickly-set spike of the pink and white blossoms; daisies
and dandelions are out; the purple crocuses sprinkle the ground, the
petals exquisitely varied on the reverse side, and the stamens of bright
salmon color; the large double anemones have come forth, certain that it
is spring; on the higher crags by the wayside the Mediterranean heather
has shaken out its delicate flowers, which fill the air with a mild
fragrance; while blue violets, sweet of scent like the English, make our
path a perfumed one. And this is winter.
We have made a late start, owing to the fact that everybody is captain
of the expedition, and to the Sorrento infirmity that no one is able to
make up his mind about anything. It is one o'clock when we reach a high
transverse ridge, and find the headlands of the peninsula rising before
us, grim hills of limestone, one of them with the ruins of a convent on
top, and no road apparent thither, and Capri ahead of us in the sea, the
only bit of land that catches any light; for as we have journeyed the
sky has thickened, the clouds of the sirocco have come up from the
south; there has been first a mist, and then a fine rain; the ruins
on the peak of Santa Costanza are now hid in mist. We halt for
consultation. Shall we go on and brave a wetting, or ignominiously
retreat? There are many opinions, but few decided ones. The drivers
declare that it will be a bad time. One gentleman, with an air of
decision, suggests that it is best to go on, or go back, if we do not
stand here and wait. The deaf lady, from near Dublin, being appealed to,
says that, perhaps, if it is more prudent, we had better go back if
it is going to rain. It does rain. Waterproofs are put on, umbrellas
spread, backs turned to the wind; and we look like a group of explorers
under adverse circumstances, “silent on a peak in Darien,” the donkeys
especially downcast and dejected. Finally, as is usual in life, a
compromise prevails. We decide to continue for half an hour longer and
see what the weather is. No sooner have we set forward over the brow of
a hill than it grows lighter on the sea horizon in the southwest, the
ruins on the peak become visible, Capri is in full sunlight. The clouds
lift more and more, and still hanging overhead, but with no more rain,
are like curtains gradually drawn up, opening to us a glorious vista of
sunshine and promise, an illumined, sparkling, illimitable sea, and a
bright foreground of slopes and picturesque rocks. Before the half hour
is up, there is not one of the party who does not claim to have been the
person who insisted upon going forward.
We halt for a moment to look at Capri, that enormous, irregular rock,
raising its huge back out of the sea, its back broken in the middle,
with the little village for a saddle. On the farther summit, above
Anacapri, a precipice of two thousand feet sheer down to the water on
the other side, hangs a light cloud. The east elevation, whence
the playful Tiberius used to amuse his green old age by casting his
prisoners eight hundred feet down into the sea, has the strong sunlight
on it; and below, the row of tooth-like rocks, which are the extreme
eastern point, shine in a warm glow. We descend through a village,
twisting about in its crooked streets. The inhabitants, who do not see
strangers every day, make free to stare at and comment on us, and even
laugh at something that seems very comical in our appearance; which
shows how ridiculous are the costumes of Paris and New York in some
places. Stalwart girls, with only an apology for clothes, with bare
legs, brown faces, and beautiful eyes, stop in their spinning, holding
the distaff suspended, while they examine us at leisure. At our left,
as we turn from the church and its sunny piazza, where old women sit
and gabble, down the ravine, is a snug village under the mountain by
the shore, with a great square medieval tower. On the right, upon rocky
points, are remains of round towers, and temples perhaps.
We sweep away to the left round the base of the hill, over a difficult
and stony path. Soon the last dilapidated villa is passed, the last
terrace and olive-tree are left behind; and we emerge upon a wild, rocky
slope, barren of vegetation, except little tufts of grass and a sort of
lentil; a wide sweep of limestone strata set on edge, and crumbling in
the beat of centuries, rising to a considerable height on the left.
Our path descends toward the sea, still creeping round the end of the
promontory. Scattered here and there over the rocks, like conies,
are peasants, tending a few lean cattle, and digging grasses from the
crevices. The women and children are wild in attire and manner, and set
up a clamor of begging as we pass. A group of old hags begin beating
a poor child as we approach, to excite our compassion for the abused
little object, and draw out centimes.
Walking ahead of the procession, which gets slowly down the rugged path,
I lose sight of my companions, and have the solitude, the sun on the
rocks, the glistening sea, all to myself. Soon I espy a man below me
sauntering down among the rocks. He sees me and moves away, a solitary
figure. I say solitary; and so it is in effect, although he is leading
a little boy, and calling to his dog, which runs back to bark at me. Is
this the brigand of whom I have read, and is he luring me to his haunt?
Probably. I follow. He throws his cloak about his shoulders, exactly as
brigands do in the opera, and loiters on. At last there is the point
in sight, a gray wall with blind arches. The man disappears through
a narrow archway, and I follow. Within is an enormous square tower. I
think it was built in Spanish days, as an outlook for Barbary pirates.
A bell hung in it, which was set clanging when the white sails of the
robbers appeared to the southward; and the alarm was repeated up the
coast, the towers were manned, and the brown-cheeked girls flew away
to the hills, I doubt not, for the touch of the sirocco was not half so
much to be dreaded as the rough importunity of a Saracen lover. The bell
is gone now, and no Moslem rovers are in sight. The maidens we had just
passed would be safe if there were. My brigand disappears round the
tower; and I follow down steps, by a white wall, and lo! a house,--a red
stucco, Egyptian-looking building,--on the very edge of the rocks.
The man unlocks a door and goes in. I consider this an invitation,
and enter. On one side of the passage a sleeping-room, on the other
a kitchen,--not sumptuous quarters; and we come then upon a pretty
circular terrace; and there, in its glass case, is the lantern of the
point. My brigand is a lighthouse-keeper, and welcomes me in a quiet
way, glad, evidently, to see the face of a civilized being. It is very
solitary, he says. I should think so. It is the end of everything. The
Mediterranean waves beat with a dull thud on the worn crags below. The
rocks rise up to the sky behind. There is nothing there but the sun, an
occasional sail, and quiet, petrified Capri, three miles distant across
the strait. It is an excellent place for a misanthrope to spend a week,
and get cured. There must be a very dispiriting influence prevailing
here; the keeper refused to take any money, the solitary Italian we have
seen so affected.
We returned late. The young moon, lying in the lap of the old one, was
superintending the brilliant sunset over Capri, as we passed the last
point commanding it; and the light, fading away, left us stumbling over
the rough path among the hills, darkened by the high walls. We were not
sorry to emerge upon the crest above the Massa road. For there lay the
sea, and the plain of Sorrento, with its darkening groves and hundreds
of twinkling lights. As we went down the last descent, the bells of the
town were all ringing, for it was the eve of the fete of St. Antonino.