BLUE GROTTO, CAPRI.
It is only when you are five or six feet below the surface of the water that you can appreciate its incredible purity. Notwithstanding the liquid that envelops the diver, no detail escapes him; he sees everything,—the tiniest shell at the base of the smallest stalactite of the arch, just as clearly as if through the air; only each object assumes a deeper hue.
At the end of a quarter of an hour, we clambered back into our boats and dressed ourselves without having apparently attracted one of the invisible nymphs of this watery palace, who would not have hesitated, if the contrary had been the case, to have kept us here twenty-four hours at least. The fact was humiliating; but neither of us pretended to be a Telemachus, and so we took our departure. We again crouched in the bottom of our respective canoes, and we went out of the Blue Grotto with the same precautions and the same good luck with which we had entered it: only it was six minutes before we could open our eyes; the ardent glare of the sun blinded us. We had not gone more than a hundred feet away from the spot we had visited before it seemed to have melted into a dream.
We landed again at the port of Capri. While we were settling our account with our boatmen, Pietro pointed out a man lying down in the sunshine with his face in the sand. This was the fisherman who nine or ten years ago discovered the Blue Grotto while looking for frutti di mare along the rocks. He went immediately to the authorities of the island to make his discovery known, and asked the privilege of being the only one allowed to conduct visitors to the new world he had found, and to have revenue from those visitors. The authorities, who saw in this discovery a means of attracting strangers to their island, agreed to the second proposition, and since that time this new Christopher Columbus has lived upon his income and does not trouble to conduct the visitors himself; this explains why he can sleep as we see him. He is the most envied individual in the island.
As we had seen all that Capri offered us in the way of wonders, we stepped into our launch and regained the Speronare, which, profiting by several puffs of the land breeze, set sail and gently glided off in the direction of Palermo.
Le Speronare: Impressions de Voyage (Paris, 1836).
MONT BLANC AND CHAMOUNI
(SWITZERLAND)
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY