This road was little more than a bridle-path, leading among bushes and through a thicket. At first I was too eager to get on, to look about me; but, after walking a quarter of a mile along it, I was struck with the magnitude of the stones with which the path was still partly paved, though long intervals occurred in which there was no pavement at all. Pointing to these stones, I was about to ask an explanation, when the good father nodded his head, with a smile, and said significantly, “_Via Appia_.” We had thus blundered on near a mile of the Appian Way, the greater part of which was still in tolerable condition, though in part overgrown with bushes! I knew that the post-road between Rome and Salerno, and indeed still farther south, ran, much of the way, over this old road; but the latter is buried, in a way not to be seen. Here it was above ground, and just as much the Appian Way as the bits that are seen at Pompeii and Pozzuoli. At the farther end of this fragment of the celebrated road, is a bridge of some length; but, unfortunately, the priest had left us before we reached it, and I could not inquire as to its date. It certainly belongs to the Appian Way; but the architecture struck me as being that of the middle ages rather than that of Rome, for it has a strong resemblance to those ruins of which I saw so many on the shores of the gulf of Genoa, and which I believe, are known to date from the latter period. It was long, narrow, and of irregular construction, but appeared as solid as the day it was built. This bridge is within a few rods of the post-road, and travellers, by inquiring for the by-way to Sessa, when they get within a mile or a mile and a half of the post-house at St. Agata, can at any time see it by a delay of ten minutes,—and, with it, the first specimen of the Appian Way that remains paved and above ground, I believe, north of Capua. None of my guide-books speak of it, and I presume we are among the first strangers who have seen it. The stones of the pavement are large and irregularly shaped, like those of Pompeii. We had other interesting objects, and more ruins at a spot that is thought to have been the ancient Minturnum, after we found the carriages, which turned back to meet us. The Garigliano, which flows by this place, was the Liris, the stream that separated Magna Græcia from Latium. We slept at Mola di Gaeta. The inn was beautifully placed on the gulf, and was reasonably good. The town of Gaeta is a short distance farther advanced, on a peninsula, which curves in a way to make a sort of port in front of Mola. Æneas has the credit of having founded Gaeta.