A delightful stroll, yesterday, with a wild youngster from the village
of Torco - what joy to listen to analphabetics for a change: they are
indubitably the salt of the earth - down that well-worn track to
Crapolla, only to learn that my friend Garibaldi, the ancient fisherman,
the genius loci, has died in the interval; thence by boat to the lonely
beach of Recomone (sadly noting, as we passed, that the rock-doves at
the Grotto delle Palumbe are now all extirpated), where, for the sake of
old memories, I indulged in a bathe and then came across an object rare
in these regions, a fragment of grey Egyptian granite, relic of some
pagan temple and doubtless washed up here in a wintry gale; thence, for
a little light refreshment, to Nerano; thence to that ill-famed "House
of the Spirits" where my Siren-Land was begun in the company of one who
feared no spirits - victim, already, of this cursed war, but then a
laughter-loving child - and down to the bay and promontory of Ierate,
there to make the unwelcome discovery that certain hideous quarrying
operations on the neighbouring hill have utterly ruined the charm of
this once secluded site; thence laboriously upwards, past that line of
venerable goat-caves, to the summit of Mount San Costanzo.
Nothing has changed. The bay of Naples lay at my feet as of old, flooded
in sunshine.
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