Formerly the most populous and prosperous township of the whole island, Casamicciola consists to-day principally of a mass of shapeless ruins, together with a number of dismal corrugated iron huts grouped round an ugly modern church, nor can its exquisite views and luxuriant gardens make amends for the settled air of melancholy which continues to brood over this unlucky spot. Every reader will doubtless remember the story of the terrible earthquake of July 28th 1883, when almost without warning the whole town, then crowded with its usual influx of summer visitors, was overthrown and engulfed in the space of a few seconds of time. Hotels, villas, churches, cottages, all suffered equally, and though the exact number of those who perished of all classes will never be known, the most moderate accounts put the figure as high as 3000 souls. Several English people lost their lives in that brief but terrible upheaval, and as many of the bodies as were recovered from the wreckage were laid to rest in the little cemetery outside the town, a plot of ground overhanging the sea, and shaded by cypress and eucalyptus trees. Many and impressive are the stories still to be heard from the lips of the present inhabitants, who are wont to date all events from that fearful night of darkness and destruction, and who all have piteous tales to tell of relations killed and houses shattered. The English landlady of the _Piccola Sentinella_, who herself had an almost miraculous escape on the occasion, gave us a most vivid and heart-rending description of how her hotel and most of its inmates were overwhelmed on that awful July night, and how the existing inn is literally built upon foundations that are filled with many unrecovered bodies of victims. It was on a dark sultry night after the evening meal had been finished, when the many guests of the _Piccola Sentinella_ were sitting in the public rooms or on the terrace overlooking the hotel gardens. In the _salon_ a young Englishman, an accomplished musician, had been playing for some time on the piano, when suddenly and unexpectedly he plunged into the strains of Chopin’s _Marche Funèbre_, which had the immediate effect of scattering his audience, since many of his listeners, not caring for so melancholy a piece of music, deserted the room for the garden. Lucky indeed were those persons driven forth by the strains of Chopin’s dirge, for a few moments later came the earthquake, when in a trice the whole hotel was swallowed up in the yawning chasm of the earth. Everybody inside the walls was killed, and the body of the poor pianist was actually discovered later amidst the wreckage, crushed down upon the instrument which had struck the warning notes of impending disaster. The horrors of that night still linger vividly in the memory of the people, and many are the terrible incidents, and many also, we are glad to say, the acts of bravery which are recorded of it. One elderly