Morning journal and courier., 1890-05-10

A LOVely 1r1p DY steamer From Fa1.
 ermo to Naples-Intoxicating Zeph-
 yrs-ThOughts That Crowd the Mind
 When the Shore is Reached-Carried
 Back to the Days of Mythology
 Changes In Races and DynastIes-
 The Gulf of NapIes-Castellamma
 The Silent Walls of Pompeft-Some
 Ancient Casfles-MOdern Naples.
 NAPLES, Italy, April g.
 To the Editor Of the JOURNAL AND COURIER:
 There can be nothing more restful and de- licious than the trip by steamer from Paler- mo, Sicily, across the Italian arm of the Mediterranean to the bright and slovenly, magnificent and detestable metropolis of It. ally, landlord cursed, nobility housing, revo- lution breeding, lazzaroni producing, retro- gressive, yet always progressive, Naples.
 Aside from the soft and tender skies, the landward perfumes which, despite one's highest efforts at mental activity, insiduous- ly impel siesta and sleep, and such intoxica- ting zephyrs that one no longer wonders at the inspiration to an art which left us the Fsrnese Narcissus, the Venus of Capua, or Milo, the impalpsble Echo turned to an e!er- nal human listener in countless forms by brush UT chisel, or as many matchless Dianas bending over their white and slumberfnl En- dymions to kiss them back to consciousness, all the way eastward toward the Neapolitan shore the mind and heart are marvelously wrought by the story of the peoples and places of this wave washed western peninsu- la edge of Italy. Tho sky, air and sea are tenderly enthralling to tho physical sense; but there is an intensity of mental interest that fills the soul of thought with as tender and hushed a solemnity. In front of this shore one stands face to face with human tragedies of the densest of old world popu- lations and aetivivies for three thousand years; indeed from time when mythology tells us gods were half men and men were demi-gods, down past that almost inconceiv- able reach of time in which the very face of sea and earth were changed, innumerable races and dynasties grew to perfection and passed away, miracles of cities were built, lost from sight, dug out again and repeopled, and the splendid yet pathetic Italy of to-day sits buried in bloom and vine above the half known monuments of past no renaissance of power and art can ever again produce. The night, the sea, the balmy airs and the glowing stars compel the mood for these wondrous sweeps of thought life, resist them
 
 and sets just there before you an hundred miles of storied shore--the sunny islands nearest, the background of green and purple mountains with Vesuvius looming over all, the splendid city of Naples, reaching its shining arms to the right and left about the luminous bay, and then a half hundred cit ies and villages climbing the craggy shore, like processions of oowled monks pilgriming to as many mountain shrines-the conscious ness of presence and reality, where in one's thought throughout the lifetime before all had been as @ vague and misty dream, stirs the mind and heart magically to their pro- foundest depths.
 The first complete view of the Gulf of Naples sweeps the thought to time when, even ages back of the peopling of the first Naples, old Parthenope, by the Greeks, the present conformation of shore, outreaching promontores, and farther vine clad islands was made by the action of some monstrous prehistoric volcano with crater an hundred times as vast ss that possessed by either At- na or Vesuvius to-day. This, rearing it's head above the sea, boiled and roared, per- | haps for other ages, and then sank back be- | meath the waves. The waters gleaming l above it to-day are those of the Gulf of Na- | ples. The broken volcano's edges, still standing, mark the semi circular heights above the city of Naples, the long, splendid | arm sweeping around to the south, below
 
 | are it's outjuttings, showing ID Mount St.. Contapzo and the island of Capri; while it's l northern rim is outlined by the heights west of Naples, Cape Misenum and the islands of | Procida and Ischia, breaking off grandly to l the southwest. More than three quarters of | the rim of this tremendous extinct crater is | thus clearly discerned. As late as 1909 | en volcanic furies by pouring out destructive | floods of lava; while, dominating the eastern shore of the gulf, and marking the limits of volcanic action on that side of the original mouth of flame, Vesuvius has since stood, 1 grim, silent and "burnt mountain at the time of Christ's birth, but in the year 79 burning and crumbling into two great divi- sions; and, though sending forth no lava, l belchiug forth such showers of hot and wet ashes, as to hide splendid Herculaneum and l lordly Pompeii from sight of human eyes fol l eighteen hundred yeara. Naples itself faces | the south along that northern arm of the gulf known as the Bay of Naples; and you have picture of it's shape and contour fl you will imagine tremendous cheekered-
 back turtle which has crept down ateer
 bank to glowing waterside, to bask there
 in the sun. It's wary head is the Castle dell
 Ovo. Its fore legs stretch lazily around to
 the east and vest It's hind legs protrude tc
 the right and left in the countryward streets of Salute and Foria. And it's shining tail is
 represented by the splendid height of Capo.
 dimonte behind, where gleam the walls oi
 that noble pile, the Pallozo Rsale. "See
 Naples and die," is maxim which must
 have had it's origin in the mind of some on
 thusiast who approached the city from the
 sea. To the north is the mountainous isi-
 and, Ischia, it's circular shores banded with
 picturesque villages, and fringed with net
 work of fishers sails. Beyond. to the east s| lies Procida, dainty and smiling and green
 Then Cape Miseno walling in the tiny gulf o1
 Pozzuoli; with countless vineyards and VII
 Ina between Naples and the shore. To tht
 south. wild and rocky Capri, a string o
 pearl like villages threading the warm ani
 plitterfng shores, and again the outer firing
 of lazy sails. Between it and the mainland promontory magnificent view of the Gul