But among the very first things of all, we ought to speak of the method employed in preparing alica,[234] a most delightful and most wholesome food, and which incontestably confers upon Italy the highest rank among the countries that produce the cereals. This delicacy is prepared, no doubt, in Egypt as well, but of a very inferior quality, and not worth our notice. In Italy, however, it is prepared in numerous places, the territories of Verona and Pisæ, for example; but that of Campania is the most highly esteemed. There, at the foot of mountains capped with clouds, runs a plain, not less in all than forty miles in extent. The land here—to give a description first of the nature of the soil—is dusty on the surface, but spongy below, and as porous as pumice. The inconveniences that generally arise from the close vicinity of mountains are here converted into so many advantages: for the soil, acting on it as a sort of filter, absorbs the water of the abundant rains that fall; the consequence of which is, that the water not being left to soak or form mud on the surface, the cultivation is greatly facilitated thereby. This land does not return, by the aid of any springs, the moisture it has thus absorbed, but thoroughly digests it, by warming it in its bosom, in a heated oven as it were. The ground is kept cropped the whole year through, once with panic, and twice with spelt; and yet in the spring, when the soil is allowed to have a moment’s repose, it will produce roses more odoriferous by far than the cultivated rose: for the earth here is never tired of producing, a circumstance in which originated the common saying, that Campania produces more unguents[235] than other countries do oil. In the same degree, however, that the Campanian soil excels that of all other countries, so does that part of it which is known to us as Laboriæ,[236] and to the Greeks as Phlegræum, surpass all the rest. This district is bounded on two sides by the consular high road, which leads from Puteoli to Capua on the one side, and from Cumæ on the other.