But we must ask our reader to continue his land journey a little further south than Brindisi, just for a moment, so that he may get to Leece, twenty-five miles. This is as far as he can go by railway towards Otranto, twenty-nine miles farther at the very extremity of the heel of the boot of Italy, the Castle of which used, in the days of our boyhood, thanks to Horace Walpole, to enchain, enchant, delight and to terrify us. We feel bound to acknowledge the fact that we are exactly forty-five years older than we were forty-five years ago. We fear we must also confess to a sense of terror about Otranto that can only cease with our own cessation. We are therefore not surprised that even Captain Tyler, stout, resolute and brave as he is, did not wish to go to Otranto. “I did not,” says Captain Tyler in his report of 1866, “even consider it worth while to visit Otranto, although I made a personal inspection of all the other Italian Ports to which I have referred, as well as those of Naples and Genoa.” In other words, Captain Tyler visited every Italian Port except one, and that one was Hob-gob-lin! The connection of the _Ferovia Meridionale_ with the net-work of the _Calabro-Sicula_ is effected by means of a branch given off at Bari, half way between Foggia and Brindisi, and running for seventy-two miles south to Tarento, situated at the very top of the front of Italy’s heel. Whilst Brindisi is intended to be the commercial port of Italy towards its southern extremity, Tarento is to be its great southern port for military purposes. The extent and depth of the outer harbour, its great natural advantage in a military as well as in a naval point of view, and the extent of the “_seno interno_” or inner expanse of deep water, render it admirably applicable for a naval arsenal. It will therefore eventually fulfil for Italy the purposes which Plymouth fulfils for England, while Spezzia on the Mediterranean, half way between Genoa and Leghorn, may be considered as Italy’s Portsmouth.