tain 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