And ... what shows a branch
Coral-coloured, transparent, with circlets
Of pale sea-green leaves.”
Above our heads hovers a kite, performing graceful circles in the keen clear air and breaking the oppressive silence of the place with his shrill screams, for his mate must have her nest hidden in some cleft of yon grey towering cliff. A pair of crested hoopoes with brown plumage and ruddy breasts keep fluttering a little way before us, uttering from time to time their curious notes of alarm. Mercifully these handsome birds have escaped the fowler, who lays his snares even amongst the spirit-haunted crags of this desolate region. The hoopoe, though a very rare visitor to our northern shores, is fairly common on the Mediterranean coast, and he would be still more frequently encountered, were it not for his hereditary enemy, Man. There is a venerable legend concerning this interesting bird—bubbola, the Italians call him—which relates how ages ago on the scorching plains of Palestine a number of hoopoes once followed King Solomon as he was riding, and in order to protect the great king from the fierce rays of the sun, they formed themselves into a living screen to shelter the royal head. Grateful for this welcome attention, Solomon Ben David at eventide sent for the king of the Hoopoes to ask him what reward he would like [pg 35]to receive for this service, and the answer was promptly made that a crown of pure gold on the head would be acceptable. The Jewish monarch smiled grimly as he granted the request, whereupon immediately each bird found his poll decorated with a tuft of pure golden feathers, and mightily pleased with their new magnificence were the conceited hoopoes. But alas! the news was quickly spread abroad that there were to be seen strange birds with plumes of real gold, and the eternal lust of gain at once set men in quest of the hoopoes, whom they began to slay wholesale with stones, arrows, and traps in order to obtain the coveted precious metal they bore on their heads. In despair, the king of the hoopoes then flew to the monarch sitting on his ivory throne at Jerusalem, and begged him to change their golden crowns for crests of feathers. Solomon the Wise smilingly gave the order; at once lovely red and black feathers took the place of the golden plumes, and the slaughter of the hoopoes in Palestine forthwith ceased. And the story, argues the recorder of this lesson upon the folly of personal adornment, must of necessity be true, for it is certain that the hoopoes bear a crown of feathers upon their heads unto this day.
Slowly we toil up the last portion of the peak, until we reach the ruined chapel of St Michael upon its summit, which is still a resort of local pilgrims, although in these days of doubt and avarice, when “sins are so many and saints so few,” the statue of the Archangel since its removal from this spot no longer perspires with the sacred dew, which the priests used to collect with cotton wool on the first day of August and distribute to the peasants of the district. [pg 36]Like the oil that was once wont to exude from the blessed relics of St Andrew in the Cathedral of Amalfi, non c’è più; we may possess motor cars and radium, but we must contrive to exist without these precious exhibitions of the miraculous.
It would be sheer folly to attempt a full description of that glorious view, comprising the bays of Gaeta, Naples, and Salerno; of Vesuvius with his ascending smoky clouds; of the endless chain of the snow-tipped Abruzzi Mountains that bound the vision to the east; of the vast expanse of the Mediterranean, stretching in one unbroken sheet of turquoise to the west, varied by violet patches of reflected cloud, and studded by innumerable ships, from the vast liners to the tiny fishing craft with their glistening sails, like snow-white sea-swallows resting on the calm waters. Again we turn to Robert Browning, most human of poets and most kindly of philosophers, to find adequate expression for the thoughts we dare not, cannot utter.
“Oh, heaven and the terrible crystal!
No rampart excludes
Your eye from the life to be lived
In the blue solitudes.