whether posterity would hear of him and
journey to his birthplace in this world-neglected Forio. Such
reveries are futile. Yet who entirely resists them?

Monte Epomeo

About three on the morning which divides the month of May into two
equal parts I woke and saw the waning moon right opposite my window,
stayed in her descent upon the slope of Epomeo. Soon afterwards
Christian called me, and we settled to ascend the mountain. Three
horses and a stout black donkey, with their inevitable grooms, were
ordered; and we took for guide a lovely faun-like boy, goat-faced,
goat-footed, with gentle manners and pliant limbs swaying beneath
the breath of impulse. He was called Giuseppe.

The way leads past the mineral baths and then strikes uphill, at
first through lanes cut deep in the black lava. The trees meet
almost overhead. It is like Devonshire, except that one half hopes
to see tropical foxgloves with violet bells and downy leaves
sprouting among the lush grasses and sweet-scented ferns upon those
gloomy, damp, warm walls. After this we skirted a thicket of
arbutus, and came upon the long volcanic ridge, with divinest
outlook over Procida and Miseno toward Vesuvius. Then once more we
had to dive into brown sandstone gullies, extremely steep, where the
horses almost burst their girths in scrambling, and the grooms
screamed, exasperating their confusion with encouragements and
curses. Straight or bending as a willow wand, Giuseppe kept in
front. I could have imagined he had stepped to life from one of
Lionardo's fancy-sprighted studies.

After this fashion we gained the spine of mountain which composes
Ischia--the smooth ascending ridge that grows up from those eastern
waves to what was once the apex of fire-vomiting Inarime, and breaks
in precipices westward, a ruin of gulfed lava, tortured by the
violence of pent Typhoeus. Under a vast umbrella pine we
dismounted, rested, and saw Capri. Now the road skirts slanting-wise
along the further flank of Epomeo, rising by muddy earth-heaps and
sandstone hollows to the quaint pinnacles which build the summit.
There is no inconsiderable peril in riding over this broken ground;
for the soil crumbles away, and the ravines open downward,
treacherously masked with brushwood.

On Epomeo's topmost cone a chapel dedicated to S. Niccolo da Bari,
the Italian patron of seamen, has been hollowed from the rock.
Attached to it is the dwelling of two hermits, subterranean, with
long dark