Before we left our native land to begin the research in Italy, we were under the impression that emigration was merely a matter of so many hundreds of thousands of people traveling each season from their homes in Europe to the nearest ports, and taking third-class passage to New York, where they were landed at Ellis Island and examined. That is the American idea of it,—that and no more! That anything befell them, other than happens to traveling families in any place, before they reached Ellis Island, never occurred to us. The process of birth certificates, passports, declarations, and grouping by the numbers on the ship’s manifest was all unexpected; and here at Naples was yet more formality, and, looking back over the whole trip, the Naples stage seems really more interesting and surely as important as the Ellis Island one. The morning (30th of September) that we arrived on the _Reina Margherita_ from Messina, and debarked with our baggage at nine o’clock on the quay before the Capitaneria del Porto, with no shelter from the sun already beginning to send down rays of broiling heat and blinding whiteness, we were rallied into one crowd by agents of the North German Lloyd broker, Vincenzo di Luca fu Giacomo, who stood at the foot of the gangplank crying, “_Germanese! Germanese!_” and into another by agents of the La Veloce Line broker, who stood on the other side and called, “_Veloce! Veloce!_” Across the quay, directly opposite where the _Reina Margherita_ had docked, lay the beautiful long gray _Citta di Napoli_, ready to sail that day, and from the other side of the Capitaneria we could see emigrants who were going in her, pouring out of the examination-rooms in hundreds, and carrying their baggage aboard. All the third-class passengers among us who were going by the Veloce Line were quickly herded together, and rushed away and put through the process. As our steamer did not sail yet for two days, we were left to wait while all the Veloce baggage was passed through the custom-house, and then that of all the first class from the _Reina Margherita_, as there is a city customs duty in Naples in addition to the national revenue, and baggage is looked at very carefully for _comestibles_, or anything that can be eaten or converted into food-stuffs.