e us on the left
rise the steep fertile slopes of the Lactarian Hills. Convent and villa,
cottage and farmhouse, peep out of embowering verdure, whilst our road is
shaded in many places by the overhanging boughs of blossoming almond and
loquat trees. The whole region is in truth a veritable garden of the
Hesperides, where in the mild equable climate fruit and flowers ripen and
bloom without a break throughout the rolling year.

[Illustration: POZZANO]

"Tall thriving trees confess'd the fruitful mould;
The verdant apple ripens here to gold;
Here the blue fig with luscious juice o'erflows,
With deepest red the full pomegranate glows,
The branches bend beneath the weighty pear,
And silver olives flourish all the year;
The balmy spirit of the western gale
Eternal breathes on fruits untaught to fail.
Each dropping pear another pear supplies,
On apples apples, figs on figs arise;
The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden, and the fruits to grow."

A lovely and a fertile scene it is indeed, and thoroughly typical of the
peculiar charm of Southern Italy, wherein the rich well-tilled lands
appear in striking contrast with the near-lying stony fallows and
scrub-covered wastes.

Beneath the picturesque pile of Santa Maria a Pozzano, perched aloft above
the roadway, we pass along the edge of the sea-girt precipice, rounding
the Capo d'Orlando, until we reach the pretty little town of Vico Equense,
with its churches and gay-coloured villas nestling amidst groves of olive
and orange trees. Vico owes its prosperity in the first instance to the
patronage of "Carlo il Zoppo," Charles the Dwarf, the lame son and heir of
King Charles of Anjou, who founded a settlement and built a villa upon the
site of the ancient Roman colony; and it was in the old royal demesne of
the Angevins that the hand of the deformed king's daughter, the Princess
Clementia, was demanded formally in marriage by the French monarch, Philip
the Bold, who sought to marry her to his third son, Charles of Valois. The
match between the young prince of France and his cousin, the Neapolitan
princess, appeared suitable to all concerned in every respect save one;
for it was well known that the King of Naples had been lame from his
birth, and it could never be deemed fit for the expected heir of France to
marry any but a perfectly sound and healthy bride. Now the Queen of Naples
was too proud to accede to the hints of t