At Formia one may turn off the direct road and in half a dozen kilometres come to the coast again at Gaeta. The road from Formia runs through a picture paradise, and an unspoilt one, considering it from the artist’s point of view. Little more shall be said, though indeed it is not as at Sorrento or Capri, but quite as good in its way, and the Albergo della Quercia, at Formia, is not as yet overrun with a clientèle of any sort. This is an artists’ sketching ground that is some day going to be exploited by some one; perhaps by the artist who made the pictures of this book. Who knows?
Over another fragment of the Appian Way the highroad now continues towards Naples via Capua.
At Capua the road plunges immediately into a maze of narrow streets and one’s only assurance of being able to find his exit from the town is by employing a gamin to sit on the running board and shout destra or sinistra at each turning until the open country is again reached at the dividing of the roads leading to Caserta and Naples respectively.
The highroad from Capua into Naples covers thirty kilometres of as good, or bad, roadway as is usually found on entering a great city where the numerous manifest industries serve to furnish a traffic movement which is not conducive to the upkeep of good roads. It is a good road, though, in parts, but the nearer you get to “la bella Napoli” the worse it becomes, as bad, almost, as the roads in and out of Marseilles or Genoa, and they are about the worst that exist for automobilists to revile.
By either Averso or Caserta one enters Naples by the rift in the hills lying back of the observatory, and finally by the tram-lined Strada Forvia, always descending, until practically at sea-level one finds a garage close beside the Hotel Royal et des Étrangers and lodges himself in that excellent hostelry. This is one way of doing it; there are of course others.
The man that first said “Vedi Napoli e poi mori!” didn’t know what he was talking about. No one will want to die after seeing Naples. He will want to live the longer and come again, if not for Naples itself then for its surroundings, for Pompeii, Herculaneum, Sorrento, Capri, Amalfi, Vesuvius and Ischia. Naples itself will be a good place at which to leave one’s extra luggage and to use as a mail address.
The history of Naples is vast, and its present and historic past is most interesting, but for all that Naples without its environs would be as naught.
The local proverb of old:
“When Salerno has its port
Naples will be mort (dead),”
has no reason for being any more, for Naples’ future as a Mediterranean seaport is assured by the indefatigable German who has recently made it a port of call for a half a dozen lines of German steamers. Britain may rule the waves, but the German is fast absorbing the profitable end of the carrying trade.