The pleasantest way to the Deserto is on foot. One goes on up the stairs from Capo di Monte, stopping gladly enough to chaffer with the children who offer flowers or early fruits, and are contented with so very little coin in exchange, then climbing on past hillside cottages and orange groves within high walls, which only now and then admit a glance across the sea to Vesuvius smoking, or the blue hills beyond Nola so far away, until at last the stairs are left behind and one passes on through vineyards into a wood which occupies the higher slopes of the open hillside, a mossy, fragrant wood, whose spring foliage is not yet so dense as to bar the sunlight from the anemones, lilac and purple, which grow in profusion out of the trailing ivy and the dead leaves of last year's fall. After the wood, the gate of the Deserto is close at hand: it gives access to a straight, steep drive, at the end of which stands a tower overtopping a red group of buildings, and on it the words-- "Ego vox clamantis In Deserto Tempus breve est." An old monk admitted me, and without waste of words, pointed out the staircase which gave access to the upper story. He did not offer to accompany me, but went back along the silent corridor like a man contemptuous of earthly things, even of the immeasurable beauty which lay stretched out on every side of that high eminence. So I went up the stairs alone, listening to the echoes of my feet, until I came to a doorway whence I passed out on the wall which surrounds the garden quadrangle; and here I turned instinctively to seek for Capri, unseen since the glimpse I caught of its high precipices on approaching Vico Equense. Looking northward from the monastery wall I had the island on my left, the sheer cliff called the Salto turned towards me, the island rocks of the Faraglioni standing out distinctly, the little marina sparkling in the sun, while high above it, like an eagle's nest, towered the crags of Anacapri and Barbarossa's castle. The morning sun had transformed the island wondrously. Grey and green by nature, some suffusion out of the warm sky had showered down deep purple on it, and from end to end it lay glowing with the colour of an evening cloud. Whence that light came was a marvel that I could not guess; for the nearer slopes of Punta di Campanella caught not a trace of it, but ravine and mountain pasture lay there in the sunlight grey and green as ever, while across the narrow strait Capri had all the tremulous beauty of the coasts of fairyland. Far away northwards, across a space of the loveliest sea imaginable, lay the craggy peak of Ischia, the low reef of Procida, and the mountains of the Campanian coast; while on the hither side of that blue land of cloudy peaks the sun had flung a heavy shadow over Monte Sant'Angelo, and all his towering slopes lay black and lurid.