n 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 corridors and windows opening on the western seas. Church
and hermitage alike are scooped, with slight expenditure of mason's
skill, from solid mountain. The windows are but loopholes, leaning
from which the town of Forio is seen, 2500 feet below; and the
jagged precipices of the menacing Falange toss their contorted
horror forth to sea and sky. Through gallery and grotto we wound in
twilight under a monk's guidance, and came at length upon the face
of the crags above Casamicciola. A few steps upward, cut like a
ladder in the stone, brought us to the topmost peak--a slender spire
of soft, yellowish tufa. It reminded me (with differences) of the
way one climbs the spire at Strasburg, and stands upon that temple's
final crocket, with nothing but a lightning conductor to steady
swimming senses. Different indeed are the views unrolled beneath the
peak of Epomeo and the pinnacle of Strasburg! Vesuvius, with the
broken lines of Procida, Miseno, and Lago Fusaro for foreground; the
sculpturesque beauty of Capri, buttressed in everlasting calm upon
the waves; the Phlegraean plains and champaign of Volturno,
stretching between smooth seas and shadowy hills; the mighty sweep
of Naples' bay; all merged in blue; aerial, translucent, exquisitely
frail. In this ethereal fabric of azure the most real of realities,
the most solid of substances, seem films upon a crystal sphere.

The hermit produced some flasks of amber-coloured wine from his
stores in the grotto. These we drank, lying full-length upon the
tufa in the morning sunlight. The panorama of sea, sky, and
long-drawn lines of coast, breathless, without a ripple or a taint
of cloud, spread far and wide around us. Our horses and donkey
cropped what little grass, blent with bitter herbage, grew on that
barren summit. Their grooms helped us out with the hermit's wine,
and turned to sleep face downward. The whole scene was very quiet,
islanded in immeasurable air. Then we asked the boy, Giuseppe,
whether he could guide us on foot down the cliffs of Monte Epomeo to
Casamicciola. This he was willing and able to do; for he told me
that he had spent many