Richland beacon., 1873-07-19
CAPRI.
One Of the Presentations Of Italy.

The whole island is only some four
miles long and a mile and half across,
and good half of this space is practi-
cally inaccessible. But it is Just the
size of Capri which become
one of its greatest charms. 1t would be
hard, in fact, to find any part of the
world where so much and such varied
beauty is packed into SO small space.
The visitor who lands from Naples or
Sorrento mounts steeply mp the slopes
of grand amphitheater, flanked on Ell
thtr side by the cliffs of st. Michael
Anacapri, to the white line of the vii
lage on the central ridge, with the
strange Saracenic dOmes of its church
lifted weirdly against the sky. Over
the crest of this ridge q counter valley
falls as steeply to the south, till 1t
reaches plateau crowned with the gray
mass of a convent, and then plunges
over crag and cliff back again to the sea.
To the east on these central valleys a
steep rise of ground ends in the ruins of
the palace of Tiberius and the great
headland which fronts the headland of
Sorrento. Everywhere the forms of the
scenery are on the largest and bOldest
scale. The great conical Tors, Tuoro-
srande and Tuoro- -piccolo, the boldly
gcraped rock of Castiglione with
its crown of medieval towers lead
up the eye to the huge cliff-wall
of Anacapri, where, thousand feet
above, the white hermitage on Monte
Solaro glimmers out fitfully from its
screen of cloud. Among the broken
heights to the east or in the central val
leys, there are hundred different walks
and a thousand different hooks, and
each walk and nook has its own indie
pendent charm. Sleeps clothed from
top to bottom in the thick greenery of
the lemon or orange; sudden breaks
like that of Metromania, where blue
strip of sea seems to have been cunning
ly let in among the rocks backgrounds
of tumbled limestone, slopes, dusty
gray with wild cactus thickets of de-
lightful greenery, where one lies hid
den in the dense scrub of myrtle and
arbutus; olive-yards creeping thriftily
mp the hill-sides, and over the cliffs and
down every slope, and into every rock
corner where the Caprese peasant-farmer
can find footing; homesteads of gray
stone with low-domed oriental roofs on
which women sit spinning, their figures
etched out against the sky; gardens
where the writhed fg-trees stand bearly
waiting for the foliage of the spring
hooks amid broken powders, and vast
fingers of rock, with the dark mass OF
the carouba finging its shade over them;
nights from which one looks suddenly
northward and southwark over a hun
dred miles of sea this is Capri. The
sea is everywhere. At one turn its wa
ters 90 flashing aVlE, unbroken by a
single sail, toward the far-off African
coast, where the Caprese boatmen are
cdtal- fishing through the hot summer
months at another the eye ranges over
the tumbled mountain masses above
Amolfi to the dim sweep of coast where
the haze hides the temples of Postum
at another the bay of Naples opens sud,
denly before us, Vesuvius and the blue
deep of Casstellamarc and the white
city-line along the coast seen with q
strange witchery across twenty miles OF
clear air.
Beautiful as the place is, it is luckily
dull enough to escape the rush OF visl'
tors which is fast turning every nook o1
the Rivers into little Brighton. There
is as vet no kind of society the
strangers are few; an English resident
or two. a dozen winter exiles, half 6
dozen artists, make up the foreign
world of Capri. The casual yankee
girl who. runs over to edo the Blue
grotto votes the place bore in an hOul
or two. and sails off to the balls and co
tilions of Nice. Even the rheumatic
dowagers, the botanical young maiden'
and the inevitable chaplain, who hover
vulture-hke over the pretty hooks of tht
world, find Capri too "uninteresting'
for their swoop. It's one shop lis th'
BARRIERS shop in the piazza, its ont
public building the communal round
house where the solitary offender
against the laws of Capri may be seel
playing cribbage through the lattic'
with the sympathizing loungers with
out. There is but a single road, an(
that st II incomplete !; and there are NJ
wheeled vehicles beyond single cart
the first which has appeared in Capri
and at which its children will stare as
prodigy. The island is paradise o
silence for those to whom silence is
| delight. One wanders about in tn
vineyards without sound save the cal
of the vine-dressers one lies on tn
cliff and hears q thousand feet belov
the dreamy wash Of the sea. There i
hardly the cry of bird to break tn
spell even the girls who meet on
with smile on the hillside smile quiet
ly and gravely in the southern fashion
as they pass by. It is the stillest plac
that the sun shines on but, with al
it's stiffness, 1t is far from being tn
home of boredom which the America
girl votes it. There are, in fact, fe,
places in the world so full of interest
The artist finds world of studies
in its riffs and cliff-walls, in the sailo
groups along it's leach, and the Gree
faces of the girls in its vineyards. Th
The geologist reads the secret of tn
pastin its ab-uptly-titled strata, in tn
deposit of volcanic ash, in the fossils an
bones which Augustus set the fashion
of collecting before geology was though
of. The historian and the arch@Ologif
have vet wider field. Brief as was th
period of its historic glory, Capri is
perfect treasure-house of Roman n
mains. Twelve imperial villas wei
crowded into the little island, and th
remains of two, the so-called "palace
and "Baths of Tiberius, still exist
on the largest scale. But the whOl
island is a mass of broken fragments
One can hardly dig without coming o
the wreck of Roman houses, on tessel'
ted pavements, and marbles, and stu