Soon after passing Atrani we turn sharply up hill to the left, and begin our ascent towards Ravello. The dusty white road winds upwards through a region of carefully cultivated terraces filled with olives and vines, intermingled here and there with orange, lemon, fig, and pomegranate trees. As we gain higher ground, our horizon tends ever to widen, and we behold the expanse of sea and sky melting in the far distance into “some shade of blue unnameable,” whilst the mountain-fringed ring of the Bay of Salerno becomes vividly mapped out to our eyes from the Cape of Minerva to the Punta di Licosia. On our left we peer down into the depths of the dark ravine of the Dragone, whose black shadows are popularly supposed to give its name of Atrani to the cheerful little town we have left behind. Let us thank Heaven that we are at last out of reach of the beggars, and that the only human beings to be encountered upon the road are a few peasants with loads of fruit or vegetables, and an occasional charcoal-burner bearing his grimy burden to the town below. The _carbonaio_ with his blackened face and queer outlandish garments is a familiar figure throughout all parts of Southern Italy. He belongs to a race apart, that dwells in the belt of forest land clothing the higher hills, and he only descends to the cities of the shore and the plain in order to sell his goods. He is despised by the sharper-witted townsman, who beats down his prices for the combustibles he has borne with such fatigue from his distant mountain home. Sometimes the old people are despatched to do the money bargaining, the selling and buying. Look at the old couple at this moment passing us; an aged man and woman that Theocritus might have known in earlier days when the world was less civilized and less greedy of gain. With bare travel-stained feet, with feeble frames supported by long staves and with the heavy sacks of charcoal on their bent backs, the modern Baucis and Philemon crawl along the white road beneath a broiling sun, patient and uncomplaining, and apparently with no feelings of envy as they cast one careless glance at our carriage. Weary and foot-sore, they will only obtain a few _quattrini_ in the town for all their toil and trouble, and then they must retrace every step up the long hill-side, with their little stock of provisions to help eke out a miserable existence. Yet can any life in such a climate and amid such surroundings be truly accounted miserable, we ask, no matter how humble the dwelling or frugal the fare?