How Picturesque The Great Crags And
Points Of Rock Overhanging To-Morrow's Narrow Road, Where Galley-
Slaves Are Working In The Quarries Above, And The Sentinels Who
Guard Them Lounge On The Sea-Shore!
All night there is the murmur
of the sea beneath the stars; and, in the morning, just at
daybreak, the prospect suddenly becoming expanded, as if by a
miracle, reveals--in the far distance, across the sea there!--
Naples with its islands, and Vesuvius spouting fire!
Within a
quarter of an hour, the whole is gone as if it were a vision in the
clouds, and there is nothing but the sea and sky.
The Neapolitan frontier crossed, after two hours' travelling; and
the hungriest of soldiers and custom-house officers with difficulty
appeased; we enter, by a gateless portal, into the first Neapolitan
town--Fondi. Take note of Fondi, in the name of all that is
wretched and beggarly.
A filthy channel of mud and refuse meanders down the centre of the
miserable streets, fed by obscene rivulets that trickle from the
abject houses. There is not a door, a window, or a shutter; not a
roof, a wall, a post, or a pillar, in all Fondi, but is decayed,
and crazy, and rotting away. The wretched history of the town,
with all its sieges and pillages by Barbarossa and the rest, might
have been acted last year. How the gaunt dogs that sneak about the
miserable streets, come to be alive, and undevoured by the people,
is one of the enigmas of the world.
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