The Mellette County pioneer. [volume] (Wood, Mellette County, S.D.) 19??-1971, 1922-03-17

(fTepaTeu ny inc NhllOntl Geographic u
ciety, Washington. d. c.
Capri, once the beautiful island
pleasure home of Roman emperors,
lies like an hOur-glass on its side in
the blue waters Of the Bay of Naples.
The glamor of its old associations still
persists, but its appeal to the many
tourists who now swarm to its shores
is the same, no doubt, as that which
drew great Romans to tits delight
full climate, neither stimulating nOr
enervating. and its wonderful scenery
Of land and sea and sky.
Capri itself Is overlooking with
strange interest and beauty-crags,
terraced hills, the blue sea rufiled
white among half-covered rocks; in
comparable sunsets and among all Of
nature's beauties the scattered works
Of man from the ruins Of ancient mar
Die palaces TO modern villas.
Only a few miles across the sap
phire bay Naples and the Neapolitan
coast are spread out in all their be-
wildering features. One writer has
described Capri and the n%elghboring
coast as more like a miracle than an
accident of nature, while another has
complained that the scenery is TOO
much like theater curtains come to
life." Nevertheless, every person who
arrives at Naples under fair skies and
beholds this ~littOral for the first time
must be affected by It's loneliness.
Capri Is an eSthetlc wonder of the
world. It's area Is but six square
miles; but surely nowhere else in the
world are SO much loneliness and so
many interesting things packed In so
little space. Artists have always
locked to Capri, each year bringing a
fresh brood, confident in its ability
to paint the unpalntable cliffs and sea.
Some of these fingered on, some to
marry the handsome Capri girls, and
Howell's Englishman who came to the
island for three months and stayed
for thirty years Is not a unique case
In this respect.
The fame OF the Blue Grotto has
made Capri a shOw-place, and for up
ward Of a hundred years. day after
day, the tide of seasick tourists has
flowed and ebbed. In spite Of these
daily caravans, however-in spite Of
the Anacapri road, the Funicular
road, the Strada Krupp, much taste
less vllla-building, and-before the
war-the vast hordes of Germans
Capri Is still essentially unspoiled.
1t is true that the Capri women gave
up wearing their costume thirty years
ago; that the old Greek forms have
dropped out Of the island speech that
The old days have gone forever; but,
despite this, there has been n gain in
convenience and comfort Of living for
Doth Capresi and foreigners. even at q
,oss of picturesqueness, and the COM
rorting fact remains that Capri's
beauty Is rugged and perennial, not to
De destroyed by man..
Acquired by Augustus.
Capri was the first point in Cam
oania where the Greeks obtained a
soothold, and Augustus possibly did a
t~ar-sighted thing by SECURING it for
he empire in Il. c.. %, thus prevent
NC its seizure by enemies or by
pirates. There was certainly the mas
ter Of pirates 10 be considered. They
nave always been a pest of the Medi-
.erranean. At the time of Pompey's
celebrated campaign against the Medi-
terranean pirates, 81 B. c., they We're
we'll organized and intrenched; they
had naval stations and beacon towers
in various places. Centuries later the
| English actually did seize Capri, in
J 1906. and called 1t the Little Gibral-
tar" They might have held 1t, per-
haps, to this day but for the i'll luck
and incompetence Of Col. Hudson
J Lowe, later Napoleon's jailer at st.
/ Helena.
The ruin of the Capri Pharos, the
ancient lighthouse, so close to the
| largest of the ruined p~aiaces,on Capri,
Is a paramount point In the archaeoi-
| q Of the island. The selection of
Capri by Augustus was most likely
biased TO a considerable degree by the
fact that It was ideally situated for
the Pharos. This was ono of the most
sanortant lighthouses Of antiquity.