So many writers have expatiated upon the sordid ugliness of Castellamare and upon the beauty of the wooded slopes above the town, that a further description of the place may well be dispensed with. Uninteresting, however, as this industrial town appears, it boasts a long historical record, to which its crumbling medieval castle bears witness. The great Emperor Frederick the Second, the scholar-pope Pius the Second, and all the monarchs of the Angevin, Aragonese and Bourbon dynasties have been associated with this “castle by the sea.” The whole district was once the property of that human monster Pier-Luigi Farnese, duke of Parma, heir of Pope Paul the Third, of whose demoniacal cruelty and treachery the racy pages of Cellini’s Memoirs give so vivid an account, and whose repulsive face has grown familiar to us from Titian’s famous portraits in the gallery of Naples. It was the evil Pier-Luigi’s descendant and heiress-general of the family, Elizabeth Farnese, Queen of Spain, who conveyed the beautiful villa and woods of Quisisana to the Bourbon kings, and here the Neapolitan royal family for several generations sought health (as the name of the place implies) and repose upon the breezy heights that lie so conveniently near to the great city in full view to the west. Nowadays the old royal villa, deserted by crowned heads since Ferdinand’s days and fallen [pg 28]from its high estate to its present use of a hotel and pension, forms with its park the chief attraction of Castellamare, where English travellers are wont to congregate in winter, and Neapolitan and Greek seekers of pleasure or drinkers of medicinal waters resort in the hot summer months. The Southerners who come here for their villeggiatura certainly enjoy a better time than the winter visitors, for the bulky form of Monte Sant’ Angelo intercepts much of the sunshine, thereby rendering the place damp and chilly in the cold season of the year. Nominally it is the mineral springs that attract the Neapolitan folk, wherein they have a fine choice of health-giving beverages, varying from the acqua ferrata, a mild chalybeate that is found useful as a tonic, to the powerful acqua del Muraglione, that is warranted to reduce the stoutest mortal to a mere shadow of his former self in a trice. But though the waters may be occasionally sipped of a morning and wry faces made, it is in reality the warm sea-bathing on the shore, where people spend hours pickling in tepid salt water, and also the cool rides or walks amongst the shady alleys of sweet chestnut and ilex woods of Quisisana and Monte Coppola, which draw hither in summer the elegant world of Naples, and even of Athens, to visit Castellamare. The leafy groves on the zephyr-swept hill sides, once sacred to the pleasures of Bourbon tyrants, now ring with peals of noisy laughter, with gallant compliments, and with the harsh shouting of the ciucciari, the leaders of the poor over-driven donkeys. Unhappy patient beasts! usually covered with raws and galls, that are urged forward at a gallop by the remorseless stick, or even [pg 29]by the goad, for the Neapolitan donkey-boy is absolutely callous to the feelings of his animal. Not that he is cruel out of sheer cussedness, for cruelty’s sake, for he can be really kind to his dog or his cat; but the beast of burden, the helpless uncomplaining servant of man, suffers terribly at his hands. It is useless to remonstrate or argue with the young ruffian, who at our sharp reprimand will merely open wide his big black eyes and stare in genuine amazement. Non sono Cristiani—they have no souls, and the beasts are their property and not yours; what does it matter then to you how they are treated, provided they carry you properly? That is the sum total of the donkey-boy’s argument, and he has high ecclesiastical authority to back up his private theory, if he had the wit to enter into a discussion with us on the subject. Almost equally hopeless is it to point to the simple fact that a well-groomed, well-treated animal lasts longer than a half-starved, mutilated scare-crow. “How old is your horse?” we once asked a driver in the south. “He is very old indeed, eccelenza,” was the reply; “he must be nearly twelve!” On being informed that horses often worked well up to twenty years old and over in England, he let us infer, quite politely, that he thought we were romancing. Tenderness towards the dumb creation is a common, not to say a prevailing characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race, and it must be confessed that the thoughtless and horrible cruelty towards animals witnessed on all sides in the Neapolitan Riviera amounts to a serious drawback to the full enjoyment of its many beauties and amenities. Matters are improving a little of late, it is only fair [pg 30]to add. There is an Italian Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and its officials have done some good in the streets of Naples itself, but naturally its new ideas have not yet penetrated far into the country districts.

[ROAD NEAR CASTELLAMARE]

To the healthy and energetic the most delightful excursion that Castellamare can offer is the ascent to the summit of Monte Sant’ Angelo, that monarch of the Bay of Naples, whose lofty crest gleams with snowy streaks until the spring be well advanced. The lazy or the feeble can make use of one of the poor oppressed donkeys, but it is better to engage its ragged master, who without his four-footed drudge to whack and kick is a harmless enough being, to act as guide over the steep ill-defined pathway that leads ever upwards. As we slowly ascend through the sub-tropical region of fig and vine, of olive and carouba, we question our guide, who in spite of his bright eyes and well-knit frame seems about as intelligent a companion as the poor ass left behind in the stall, where he is enjoying, let us hope, an unexpected holiday. It is not easy to extract information from our native attendant, yet with a little judicious pressing we learn from him that the top of the mountain, which is our bourne, was once inhabited by evil spirits, until a holy hermit took up his abode on the peak, since when his sanctity has kept the place tolerably clear of witches and foul incubi. Wicked sprites, however, still haunt the spreading woods of beech and chestnut which we must presently traverse, and our guide (whose name is Vincenzo) admits to us that he would not care to venture there alone, even in broad daylight. There is, he tells us, warming up at [pg 31]last to the subject, much gold hidden there, which the spirits guard so jealously that they are ready to tear in pieces any mortal who is clever enough to find and bold enough to rifle their secret hoards. Only a priest, on account of his sacred office, is reckoned safe from their iniquitous spells. “But has not any one dared,” we ask, “to go in company with a holy man, to search for this hidden treasure?” Well, yes, he had been told that men from Vico had once ventured up into the woods to search for the gold. With a little encouragement Vincenzo is finally prevailed upon to give us the whole story, which is evidently of somewhat recent date.

Once upon a time there were four men, one of them being a priest, who lived in Vico, and one of these men had often been told by his father that in the forests near the top of Monte Sant’ Angelo there lay buried a chest full of gold—molto! molto! The father of the man had been himself in his youth to search for the treasure, but find it he never could, for he would never take a priest with him to avert the spells of the evil spirits of the mountain sides, who kept the place hidden. So this time the man chose two out of his friends, the boldest and the trustiest he could fix upon, to accompany him, and at the same time he obtained the promise of a cousin, who was a priest, to assist in the undertaking. All four made their way up to the woods, and whilst the three men were digging and searching, the priest continued to read aloud the incantations out of a certain book he had brought with him for the purpose. In course of time the chest was discovered to the joy of all, and sure enough it was bulging with the desired gold pieces. They opened [pg 32]it without difficulty, and the four friends divided its contents in equal shares. Scarcely had the work of division been carried out, than there came a loud voice issuing from the unknown, calling out the question:—“Che ferete con questo tesoro?” “Mangeremo, beveremo!” boldly replied one of the group, to whom this sudden accession of wealth offered dreams of unlimited platters of maccaroni and countless flasks of ruby-red Gragnano in the future. “We shall eat, we shall drink, but we shall also make abundant alms!” called out another—let us hope it was the priest!—but no sooner had the word elemosina (alms) been uttered than there was heard a most terrific rattling of chains, the gold pieces turned to dead leaves in the affrighted mortals’ hands, and the four men took to their heels and fled in alarm down the mountain flank.

Vincenzo believes this tale implicitly, just as it was related to him, and he adds to combat our own incredulity that the priest and one of the men who took part in this strange adventure were still living and ready to confirm the story, but that of the remaining two, one was now dead, and the other had been deaf and dumb ever since the event. It seem a pity to criticise Vincenzo’s simple little narrative, which makes a pretty fairy-story and points a sound moral, as it stands.

We enter the fresh scented woods that have now replaced in our climb the rich cultivated crops and terraced gardens, and here amidst the clumps of ancient chestnuts our guide points out to us the great snow-pits, the contents of which are used to cool the water sold by the acquaioli during hot summer nights in the sultry streets of Naples. These pits are dug about fifty feet deep, and half as much across, being [pg 33]conical in shape with a grating placed a short distance above the tapering base to allow the melted snow to drain off into the soil. The sides of each pit are first well-lined with straw and leafy branches, and the new-fallen snow shovelled in and forced into a solid mass by pressure from above, whilst on top is placed a sound thatched roof. As we wander through the silent woods we see patches of anemones, white and blue, lying upon the leaf-strewn ground, and beside them in many places are tufts of the pale starry primroses; coarse spurge, and lush masses of the hellebore with its large pale green flowers and dark leaves are common enough on all sides. From amongst the naked trees we emerge into the bare bleak stony stretches that lead to the summit, covered with the coarse but aromatic vegetation that clothes the dry limestone wastes of the south. How truly marvellous is the description of these wind-swept, weed-grown solitudes that Robert Browning presents to us in what is perhaps the most truly Italian in feeling of all his poems, “The Englishman in Italy!” For here with the rich imagination, worthy of some of Shelley’s finest flights, is mingled an accurate appreciation of Nature, of which Wordsworth might well be proud; for the Lake poet himself could not have improved upon this exquisite description of the various shrubs and plants of a limestone hill-top in Italy.

“The wild path grew wilder each instant,

And place was e’en grudged

’Mid the rock-chasms and piles of loose stones,