Of my sleeping accommodation with certain old ladies, of what happened to their little dog and of other matters trivial to the verge of inanity, I may discourse upon the occasion of some later visit to Valmontone. For this, the second, was by no means the last. Meanwhile, we proceed southwards. Sant' Agata, Sorrento Siren-Land revisited.... 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. There is a small outdoor cistern here. Peering into its darkness through an aperture in the roof, I noticed that there was water at the bottom; out of the water projected a stone; on the stone, a prisoner for life, sat the most disconsolate lizard imaginable. It must have tumbled through the chink, during some scuffle with a companion, into this humid cell, swum for refuge to that islet and there remained, feeding on the gnats which live in such places. I observed that its tail had grown to an inordinate length--from disuse, very likely; from lack of the usual abrasion against shrubs and stones. An unenviable fate for one of these restless and light-loving creatures, never again to see the sun; to live and die down here, all alone in the dank gloom, chained, as it were, to a few inches of land amid a desolation of black water.