Slowly we toil up the last portion of the peak, until we reach the ruined chapel of St Michael upon its summit, which is still a resort of local pilgrims, although in these days of doubt and avarice, when “sins are so many and saints so few,” the statue of the Archangel since its removal from this spot no longer perspires with the sacred dew, which the priests used to collect with cotton wool on the first day of August and distribute to the peasants of the district. Like the oil that was once wont to exude from the blessed relics of St Andrew in the Cathedral of Amalfi, _non c’è più_; we may possess motor cars and radium, but we must contrive to exist without these precious exhibitions of the miraculous. It would be sheer folly to attempt a full description of that glorious view, comprising the bays of Gaeta, Naples, and Salerno; of Vesuvius with his ascending smoky clouds; of the endless chain of the snow-tipped Abruzzi Mountains that bound the vision to the east; of the vast expanse of the Mediterranean, stretching in one unbroken sheet of turquoise to the west, varied by violet patches of reflected cloud, and studded by innumerable ships, from the vast liners to the tiny fishing craft with their glistening sails, like snow-white sea-swallows resting on the calm waters. Again we turn to Robert Browning, most human of poets and most kindly of philosophers, to find adequate expression for the thoughts we dare not, cannot utter. “Oh, heaven and the terrible crystal! No rampart excludes Your eye from the life to be lived In the blue solitudes. Oh, those mountains, their infinite movement! Still moving with you; For ever some new head and breast of them Thrusts into view To observe the intruder; you see it If quickly you turn, And before they escape you surprise them. They grudge you should learn How the soft plains they look on, lean over And love (they pretend) —Cower beneath them, the flat sea-pine crouches, The wild fruit-trees bend; E’en the myrtle leaves curl, shrink and shut, All is silent and grave: ’Tis a sensual and timorous beauty. How fair! but a slave.” [Illustration: MONTE FAITO, CASTELLAMARE]