A little further wandering brings me to a glen, whose steep slopes are brown with fallen leaves and green with budding brushwood. A stream runs down through the ravine, and a stone bridge is flung across it. Here the road divides, one branch going more directly to those uplands whence the faggots start upon their journey, and by this route bare-legged children hurry up carrying baskets of the forked sticks by which the bundles hang. But I go onwards by the other road, winding upwards by slow inclines, now deep in glades where large blue anemones glow in the long grass, and bee orchids hide among the shadows, now emerging in full sight of the wide blue gulf and the smoking volcano which towers over it, till at last I reach the top of Monte Coppola, where once more seats and tables set beneath the trees mark a spot at which the Bourbon court used to revel in the mountain breezes. I lean over the low breastwork, and enjoy the splendour of the prospect. It is late afternoon, and the westering sun leaves the great bulk of Monte Faito in deep shadow, casting only here and there a fleck of warm gold light on the pines that clothe some shoulder, and throwing into deeper shade the ravines and scars which are chiselled out of his grey flanks. Yet even in the dark clefts there are gleams of yellow broom or cytisus; for the cuckoo is calling all over the sunny country, the trees are in their brightest leaf, and all the slopes of oak and chestnut that sweep down to the margin of the bay are like a cataract of vivid green tumbling down the mountain. Here, on the summit, it is very still. The silence of the mountains holds the air, and scarce a bird twitters in the gold light. The ridge of Faito, like a gigantic buttress, cuts off all the western promontory towards Sorrento, and falls into the sea across the peak of Ischia. As the sun sank lower, and the warm light grew deeper and more golden, a great bar of cloud formed across the western sky. The sun was now above and now below it. Ischia grew shadowy, and then caught the most delicate light imaginable, swimming like an impalpable fairy island on a sea of darkest blue. Then, at some unseen change in the order of the heavens, suddenly the craggy island lost its colour, and Monte Epomeo stood out sharp and black against the flushed sky. So one saw it for a few brief moments. But all the while a rosy glow was spreading over Cape Miseno, it ran along the coast of Baiæ, and caught Posilipo with a delicate radiance. Then all at once Ischia sprang again into light, quivering with every shade of rose and purple, till the sun sank down behind its blackening peak, and the stars hung large and luminous in a space of clear green sky. CHAPTER XI SURRIENTO GENTILE: ITS BEAUTIES AND BELIEFS