As we thread our way along the road that curves round headland after headland, and is carried over sheer precipices whose base is lapped by the cool jade-green water, we begin to realize the essential difference between the Sorrentine shores we have left behind us, and the marvellous Costiera d’Amalfi we are now passing. Ever green and smiling are the favoured districts that stretch from Castellamare to Massa Lubrense, with the mountain tops acting as screens to protect the groves and crops from the sun’s ardent rays and with the fresh reviving breezes from the Abruzzi ever breathing upon them. But here we seem to be under the very eyes of the Sun-God, who stares fixedly from rising to setting upon the Amalfitan coast. Welcome enough is this continuous basking in his smiles during the short winter days; but oh! the long, long summer hours wherein King Helios relentlessly pours down his burning glances upon the shallow soil that covers the rocky face of the Costiera! We who visit the territories of the old Republic in winter or early spring only perceive one aspect of the picture. We rejoice in the gladdening warmth afforded by unbroken sunshine and by the complete absence of cutting winds which Monte Sant’ Angelo’s towering form excludes from these shores; we note with delight the premature unfolding of buds and blossoms, and we marvel at the young fruit of the dark-leaved loquat trees—the _nespoli_ of the South—turning to pale yellow even in February. But we cannot realise the blinding glare and the torrid heat of a July or August, making a perfect furnace of this sheltered corner, where the thin layer of cultivated soil, that has been scraped together painfully by human hands, becomes baked through and through, when the water-tanks are exhausted, and when the clouds of thick dust hang like a pall of white smoke for miles above the sinuous course of the Corniche road. How close and sweltering must be the atmosphere of these populous coves, when the very waves are flung luke-warm upon the hot sand! How must the inhabitants sigh for a breath of cool air from the Abruzzi, for the zephyr that tempers the heat on the Sorrentine plain! _Carpe diem_; let us enjoy the Costiera d’Amalfi in the freshness of early spring-time, before the oranges and lemons have been stripped from the leafy groves and before the sun has had time to scorch up the vegetation that now gives colour to every cleft and crevice of the rocky coast-line.