Continuing our journey past the picturesque town of Pozzuoli, its semi-oriental looking houses clustered together on a rocky headland, like Monaco, we reach the hallowed ground of the classical student. No one who has read his Virgil or his Horace at school can help being struck by the constant succession of once familiar names scattered so thickly among the dry bones of the guide-books. The district between Cumæ and Pozzuoli is the _sanctum sanctorum_ of classical Italy, and "there is scarcely a spot which is not identified with the poetical mythology of Greece, or associated with some name familiar in the history of Rome." Leaving Pozzuoli, we skirt the Phlegræan Fields, which, owing to their malaria-haunted situation, still retain something of their ancient sinister character. This tract is, however, now being drained and cultivated a good deal. That huge mound on our right, looking like a Celtic sepulchral barrow, is Monte Nuovo, a volcano, as its name denotes, of recent origin. Geologically speaking, it is a thing of yesterday, being thrown up in the great earthquake of September 30th, 1538, when, as Alexandre Dumas graphically puts it, "One morning Pozzuoli woke up, looked around, and could not recognize its position; where had been the night before a lake was now a mountain." The lake referred to is Avernus, a name familiar to all through the venerable and invariably misquoted classical tag, _facilis descensus Averni_, etc. This insignificant-looking volcanic molehill is the key to the physical geography of the whole district. Though the upheaval of Monte Nuovo has altered the configuration of the country round, the depopulation of this deserted but fertile country is due, not to the crater, but to the malaria, the scourge of the coast. The scarcity of houses on the western horn of the Bay of Naples is very marked, especially when contrasted with the densely populated sea-board on the Castellamare side. Leaving Monte Nuovo we come to a still more fertile tract of country, and the luxuriant vegetation of these Avernine hills "radiant with vines" contrasts pleasingly with the gloomy land "where the dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells" of the poet. The mythological traditions of the beautiful plain a few miles farther on, covered with vineyards and olive-groves and bright with waving corn-fields, where Virgil has placed the Elysian Fields, seem far more appropriate to the landscape as we see it. Perhaps a sense of the dramatic contrast was present in the poet's mind when he placed the Paradiso and the Inferno of the ancients so near together.