Its people still preserve, in dress and speech, marks of their origin. The
narrow strait conducts you to a high and naked bluff! That is the Misenum,
of old. Here Eneas came to land, and Rome held her fleets, and thence
Pliny took the water, to get a nearer view of the labors of the volcano,
after its awakening from centuries of sleep. In the hollow of the ridge,
between that naked bluff and the next swell of the mountain, lie the
fabulous Styx, the Elysian fields, and the place of the dead, as fixed by
the Mantuan. More on the height and nearer to the sea, lie, buried in the
earth, the vast vaults of the Piscina Mirabile--and the gloomy caverns of
the Hundred Chambers; places that equally denote the luxury and the
despotism of Rome. Nearer to the vast pile of castle, that is visible so
many leagues, is the graceful and winding Baiaen harbor; and against the
side of its sheltering hills, once lay the city of villas. To that
sheltered hill, emperors, consuls, poets, and warriors, crowded from the
capital, in quest of repose, and to breathe the pure air of a spot in
which pestilence has since made its abode. The earth is still covered with
the remains of their magnificence, and ruins of temples and baths are
scattered freely among the olives and fig-trees of the peasant. A fainter
bluff limits the north-eastern boundary of the little bay. On it, once,
stood the dwellings of emperors. There Caesar sought retirement, and the
warm springs on its side are yet called the baths of the bloody Nero.
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