My readers left me at the island of Lipari, to which place I had been driven by a storm, while voyaging from Messina toward Naples. Our vessel was too much shattered by the gale to put to sea again, and I had the prospect of a long stay at this island, which was little agreeable to me. There was not much on the island that excited my curiosity; besides, I was in a hurry to get to Naples, where a thousand interesting and wonderful objects lay open to my observation. Very luckily for me, on the fourth day of my stay at the island, a felucca from Palermo touched there, and I was gratified by the information that she was bound from thence directly to Naples. I immediately struck a bargain for a passage in her. The felucca was a vessel of about sixty tons, with two masts and lateen sails. We had a good wind, and on the morning of the second day, as I went on deck, I found we were close to the Italian shore, near the Bay of Naples. We steered between the island of Capri and the main land. Capri is a mountainous island, with steep, rocky shores, worn into arches and caverns by the surf. Little villages and country houses spotted the surface of it in different parts: and a lofty castle frowned over our heads as we sailed under the steep cliff that looks toward the continent. As we proceeded further, the wide bay of Naples opened in all its magnificent beauty upon us, and as we rounded the rocky promontory of Sorrento, Mount Vesuvius burst upon the view, sending forth a column of white smoke from its lofty summit, and lording it over the whole scene. Hardly anything can surpass the beauty of this celebrated bay. We have no scenery in America of a class to compare with it. The novelty of the objects strikes the beholder no less than their beauty and grandeur. The great volcano rises proudly in a black-looking mass from the inner shore of the bay. The dark and rocky coast on one hand is dotted with white houses all along the water’s edge. On the opposite side, the great city of Naples rises in a pile of white walls from the water, with her castles, domes, and turrets. Three or four islands, of the most beautiful forms imaginable, lie about the mouth of the bay, and diversify the prospect in that quarter. Castles and palaces stud the water’s edge in every quarter, for here is no tide which leaves the strand bare, and the sea beats only in a gentle surf, which gives additional beauty to the scene along the shore. So enchanting is the whole prospect that it has given rise to a proverbial saying among the Italians, “_See Naples, and then die_.”