hey were now on the road which runs along the ridge of Posillipo; at a
point where it is parted only by a low wall from the westward
declivity, they paused and looked towards the setting sun.

"What a noise from Fuorigrotta!" murmured Spence, when he had leaned
for a moment on the wall. "It always amuses me. Only in this part of
the world could so small a place make such a clamour."

They were looking away from Naples. At the foot of the vine-covered
hillside lay the noisy village, or suburb, named from its position at
the outer end of the tunnel which the Romans pierced to make a shorter
way between Naples and Puteoli; thence stretched an extensive plain,
set in a deep amphitheatre of hills, and bounded by the sea. Vineyards
and maizefields, pine-trees and poplars, diversify its surface, and
through the midst of it runs a long, straight road, dwindling till it
reaches the shore at the hamlet of Bagnoli. Follow the enclosing ridge
to the left, to where its slope cuts athwart plain and sea and sky;
there close upon the coast lies the island rock of Nisida,
meeting-place of Cicero and Brutus after Caesar's death. Turn to the
opposite quarter of the plain. First rises the cliff of Camaldoli,
where from their oak-shadowed lawn the monks look forth upon as fair a
prospect as is beheld by man. Lower hills succeed, hiding Pozzuoli and
the inner curve of its bay; behind them, too, is the nook which
shelters Lake Avernus; and at a little distance, by the further shore,
are the ruins of Cumae, first home of the Greeks upon Italian soil. A
long promontory curves round the gulf; the dark crag at the end of it
is Cape Misenum, and a little on the hither side, obscured in
remoteness, lies what once was Baiae. Beyond the promontory gleams
again a blue line of sea. The low length of Procida is its limit, and
behind that, crowning the view, stands the mountain-height of Ischia.

Over all, the hues of an autumn evening in Campania. From behind a bulk
of cloud, here and there tossed by high wind currents into fantastic
shapes, sprang rays of fire, burning to the zenith. Between the
sea-beach at Bagnoli and the summit of Ischia, tract followed upon
tract of colour that each moment underwent a subtle change, darkening
here, there fading into exquisite transparencies of distance, till by
degrees the islands lost projection and became mere films against the
declining day. The plain was ruddy with dead vine-leaves, and golden
with the decayi