Casting a longing look behind we quit Amalfi in the cool of the evening, in order to cover the eight intervening miles of coast road that lie between us and Salerno. We pass Atrani, with its tall parti-coloured tower, and proceed towards our destination with the smooth plain of waters below us and the fertile slopes above our heads, and thus we quickly gain Minori, another of the busy little settlements that once helped to make up the collected might of the old Republic. We meet with bare-footed sun-embrowned peasants, in their suits of blue linen and broad shady straw hats; lean sinewy figures, returning from a long day’s work in the fragrant orange groves by which the town is surrounded. We meet also, alas! with the usual crowd of beggars, the halt, the maimed, and the pseudo-blind, who are quickly left behind; nevertheless the naughty picturesque half-naked children, loudly screaming for _soldi_, caper in the dust alongside our carriage, until these little pests are out-stripped, but only to give way to other imps, equally naughty and unclothed, from Majori. Majori, nestling by the seashore amidst the enfolding mountains, appears to us a second Amalfi, with its crowded beach and brightly coloured boats, with its paper and maccaroni mills, huddled into the narrow ravine of the Senna, which cuts the town in half ere it empties itself into the Bay. Overhead the huge ruined castle of San Niccolò looms distinct against the rose-flushed evening sky, crouching like some decrepit old giant above the little city which he so oppressed in the bad old days when Sanseverini and Colonna carried on a perpetual selfish strife that allowed their humble neighbours no repose. Beautiful as is Majori, it is no lovelier than many another spot upon this exquisite coast; it is but as one pearl in a well-matched necklace, for the country that lies between Amalfi and Salerno is fully as rich in historical interest and natural charm as is the western portion that we have just traversed. Behind Majori we behold Monte Falerio, with its rocky summit tipped with the glow of evening and its base in purple shadow, descending abruptly into the darkening waters of the Bay. Slanting down to the surf-fringed beach, the great mountain seem to bar our further progress, but with a guttural imprecation and a loud cracking of the whip, our coachman deftly guides his half-starved but cunning little horses round the sharp corner of the mountain spur known as the Capo del’ Orso, and in a trice Amalfi, whither we have been straining our eyes, is snatched from our vision; a few minutes later, and we have rounded the Capo del Tumulo, with its memories of the great Genoese admiral, Filippino Doria, who in the treacherous currents that circle round this Cape, destroyed the Spanish fleet of the Emperor Charles V. Already the sun has dipped below the horizon, and the calm expanse of the Tyrrhene has lost the last reflected ray; forward our driver urges his horses in the fast-fading light.