Doubtless many persons will recall the great land-slip of December 1899, when almost without warning the whole face of the rocky headland that shelters Amalfi on the west tore itself loose and slid with a crash like thunder into the sea below, overwhelming in its fall the little inn known as the “Santa Caterina” and burying in its ruins two English ladies and several fishermen. The sinister scar still continues as a blot upon the lovely landscape, speaking only too eloquently to all of sudden death and destruction amidst the surrounding scenes of life and beauty. The older portion of the Capuchin convent, by a miracle as it were, escaped the on-rush of the land-slide, but its famous “Calvary,” the large group of the Crucifixion that appears prominently in so many pictures of Amalfi, was completely swept away, so that the boatmen from the sands below can no longer behold the immense vivid representation of the Last Agony which was wont to greet their upturned eyes. Already Time’s kindly hand has begun to drape the scene of the catastrophe with a decent mourning veil of grey and green, for the hardy succulent plants that can withstand the sun’s fierce rays and can thrive despite the boisterous salt sea-winds are already sprouting from every crack and cranny of the riven earth. Perhaps it is as well for us selfish and self-satisfied mortals to possess a _memento mori_ close at hand in a spot so teeming with the joy of life; yet somehow the first sight of that mass of broken headland and the dark ominous fissure in the hill-side, flung across the sunlit scene, is apt to send a slight shiver through the frame of the beholder.