We enter the fresh scented woods that have now replaced in our climb the rich cultivated crops and terraced gardens, and here amidst the clumps of ancient chestnuts our guide points out to us the great snow-pits, the contents of which are used to cool the water sold by the _acquaioli_ during hot summer nights in the sultry streets of Naples. These pits are dug about fifty feet deep, and half as much across, being conical in shape with a grating placed a short distance above the tapering base to allow the melted snow to drain off into the soil. The sides of each pit are first well-lined with straw and leafy branches, and the new-fallen snow shovelled in and forced into a solid mass by pressure from above, whilst on top is placed a sound thatched roof. As we wander through the silent woods we see patches of anemones, white and blue, lying upon the leaf-strewn ground, and beside them in many places are tufts of the pale starry primroses; coarse spurge, and lush masses of the hellebore with its large pale green flowers and dark leaves are common enough on all sides. From amongst the naked trees we emerge into the bare bleak stony stretches that lead to the summit, covered with the coarse but aromatic vegetation that clothes the dry limestone wastes of the south. How truly marvellous is the description of these wind-swept, weed-grown solitudes that Robert Browning presents to us in what is perhaps the most truly Italian in feeling of all his poems, “The Englishman in Italy!” For here with the rich imagination, worthy of some of Shelley’s finest flights, is mingled an accurate appreciation of Nature, of which Wordsworth might well be proud; for the Lake poet himself could not have improved upon this exquisite description of the various shrubs and plants of a limestone hill-top in Italy. “The wild path grew wilder each instant, And place was e’en grudged ’Mid the rock-chasms and piles of loose stones, Like the loose broken teeth Of some monster which climbed there to die From the ocean beneath— Place was grudged to the silver-grey fume-weed That clung to the path, And dark rosemary ever a-dying, That, spite the wind’s wrath, So loves the salt rock’s face to seaward, And lentisks as staunch To the stone where they root and bear berries, And ... what shows a branch Coral-coloured, transparent, with circlets Of pale sea-green leaves.”